Reporting

Four press freedom advocacy groups filed an ethics complaint on June 2 against Rep-elect Greg Gianforte (R-MT) for allegedly assaulting a reporter on the eve of Montana's special election. The Society of Professional Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, Free Press Action Fund and PEN America asked the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) to investigate whether Rep Gianforte violated House rules by both assaulting Ben Jacobs, a reporter for The Guardian, and by issuing a statement defending his conduct that was contradicted by eyewitness accounts and an audio recording. Gianforte was charged with misdemeanor assault last week on the night before he won the special election to fill Montana’s vacant House seat. Jacobs had tried to ask Gianforte his opinion on the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House GOP’s legislation to partially repeal and replace the health care law.

Exclusive deals between broadband providers and landlords have long been a problem for Internet users, despite rules that are supposed to prevent or at least limit such arrangements. The Federal Communications Commission is starting to ask questions about whether it can do more to stop deals that impede broadband competition inside apartment and condominium buildings.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai released a draft Notice of Inquiry (NOI) that seeks public comment “on ways to facilitate greater consumer choice and to enhance broadband deployment in multiple tenant environments (MTEs).” The commission is scheduled to vote on the NOI at its June 22 meeting, and it would then take public comments before deciding whether to issue new rules or take any other action.

News that Google intends to install an ad-blocker in its Chrome browser shocked the tech and publishing world in April. Now, details of how the program will work are starting to become clear. The Google ad-blocker will block all advertising on sites that have a certain number of "unacceptable ads." That includes ads that have pop-ups, auto-playing video, and "prestitial" count-down ads that delay the display of content. Google, which refers to the ad-blocker as an ad "filter," is using a list of unacceptable ad types provided by the Coalition for Better Ads, an advertising industry trade group. Google has already discussed its plans with publishers, who will get at least six months to prepare for the change coming sometime in 2018. Publishers will get a tool called "Ad Experience Reports," which "will alert them to offending ads on their sites and explain how to fix the issues."

The White House is telling federal agencies to blow off Democratic lawmakers' oversight requests, as Republicans fear the information could be weaponized against President Donald Trump. At meetings with top officials for various government departments this spring, Uttam Dhillon, a White House lawyer, told agencies not to cooperate with such requests from Democrats, according to Republican sources inside and outside the administration. It appears to be a formalization of a practice that had already taken hold, as Democrats have complained that their oversight letters requesting information from agencies have gone unanswered since January, and the Trump administration has not yet explained the rationale.

The declaration amounts to a new level of partisanship in Washington, where the president and his administration already feels besieged by media reports and attacks from Democrats. The idea, Republicans said, is to choke off the Democratic congressional minorities from gaining new information that could be used to attack the president.

The Federal Communications Commission is standing with the Federal Trade Commission when it comes to a federal court decision that leaves a potential regulatory gap for broadband regulation, in the process taking a shot at AT&T. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in May agreed to an en banc (full court) review of its three-judge panel decision that left the Federal Trade Commission's authority to oversee edge-provider's protections of privacy in some circumstances very much in doubt. The court also said that in the interim that panel decision was not to be cited as precedent of the Ninth Circuit.

Such en banc review is unusual, but the decision had prompted a lot of attention given that potential online privacy impact. The three-judge panel, in overturning the FTC's action against AT&T for throttling the speeds of unlimited data customers, last August ruled that the regulatory exemption that prevents the FTC from regulating common carriers is not "activity-based," confined to common carrier "activity" by an entity that has the status of a common carrier, but is status-based, extending to noncommon carrier activity by that entity as well. That meant that if Verizon, a common carrier, bought Yahoo!, an edge provider, the FTC could not enforce Yahoo! privacy policies, and the FCC could not either because it does not regulate edge providers, leaving a potential privacy gap.

Cable operator Internet service providers have been pushing hard against an opt-in regime for sharing user data with third parties, but there is another opt-in regime they are concerned about avoiding. In a phone call with the office of Commissioner Mignon Clyburn of the Federal Communications Commission, NCTA–The Internet & Television Association VP and deputy general counsel Diane Burstein argued against applying that regime to how broadband operators provide required notifications to their customers.

The FCC signaled it would be voting on a request for declaratory ruling by NCTA and the American Cable Association that they be allowed to e-mail those notifications rather than have to send out paper. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has signaled support for that ruling, so it is expected to pass, but how it is implemented is also important to ISPs. Burstein told Commissioner Clyburn staffers that though operators would continue to offer paper notices to customers who wanted them, the default should be electronic unless a subscriber opts out and chooses paper.

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals put on hold the Federal Communications Commission’s plans to restore a key media ownership rule that allowed major station groups to expand through mergers and acquisitions. The ruling could prove to be a roadblock to Sinclair Broadcast Group’s pending $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Media TV stations.

The court issued a stay to the FCC’s decision in April to restore the so-called UHF discount, which has allowed major media companies to exceed restrictions on the number of stations that they can own. The court said that the stay will give them an opportunity to review the merits of the case. Apparently, the temporary stay granted on June 1 extends through June 7, and the real test will come next week after the review is completed by a three-judge panel.

Federal Communications Commission lawyers have told a DC federal court that opponents of the April 20 decision to reinstate the UHF discount have not met the high bar for an emergency stay of that decision. The discount means that UHF TV station ownership only counts for half of their audience reach toward the 39% national ownership cap. The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit has granted an administrative stay of the June 5 effective date of the return of the discount but only so it can review the FCC's defense to an emergency stay request sought by opponents of the decision and the response from those opponents, which include Free Press and Prometheus. In opposing the emergency stay, the FCC says the commission simply concluded the agency had erred in a previous order—under then-chairman Tom Wheeler—that repealed the discount without also adjusting the cap. It did grandfather ownership groups for which the change would have pushed them over the 39% limit, though that grandfathering would not extend to sales of those stations.

Police should be allowed to unmask anonymous callers who have made serious threats over the phone, the Federal Communications Commission has proposed. The proposal would allow law enforcement, and potentially the person who’s been called, to learn the phone number of an anonymous caller if they receive a “serious and imminent” threat that poses “substantial risk to property, life, safety, or health.” Specifics are still up in the air. The FCC is asking, for instance, whether unveiled caller ID information should only be provided to law enforcement officials investigating a threat, to ensure that this exemption isn’t abused.

The Lifeline Connects Coalition spoke with staff at the Federal Communications Commission’s Wireline Competition Bureau on May 26, 2017 to discuss the Universal Service Administrative Company’s (USAC) current plan to require Lifeline subscribers to re-prove their eligibility when they are migrated to the Lifeline National Verifier and the significant burden and confusion that will impose on Lifeline participants. The Coalition said obtaining re-proof of eligibility from Lifeline subscribers is likely to be highly unsuccessful and the overwhelming majority of those de-enrollments would be due to consumers’ failure or inability to respond, not their lack of continuing eligibility for Lifeline.