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News of the movement for May 2, 2011

Comcast Must Do Better on Local News to Meet Merger Promises A new Free Press report, "No News Is Bad News," reveals deep disparities between the amount of local news offered on Comcast's English- and Spanish-language stations.

Free Press

How the Bin Laden Announcement Leaked Out The nation's TV anchors and newspaper editors did not know, at first, that President Barack Obama would be announcing the death of Osama bin Laden, an extraordinary development in the nearly 10-year-long war against terrorism waged by the United States and its allies. But reporters in Washington suspected almost immediately that the announcement could be about bin Laden.

Brian Stelter, New York Times

Osama Bin Laden Dead, the Story Twitter Broke Word that Obama would be making an announcement started spreading around 10:30 p.m. But Keith Urbahn, chief of staff for the office of the former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, appears to be the first to have broken the news that Osama bin Laden was dead -- via his @keithurbahn Twitter feed.

Tyler Gray, Fast Company

Stages of News in a Twitter and Facebook Era This evening, as we learn about the death of Osama bin Laden, we're seeing firsthand what happens when the real-time, immediate notifications of Facebook and Twitter meet real-world events. It's not the first time, but the death of Osama bin Laden is truly a global event in the way that Prince William and Kate Middleton's marriage was not, or even what the protests in Egypt and Libya are not.

Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOM

Lara Logan on Egypt Sexual Assault: Mob Was 'Trying to Tear My Limbs off My Body' In her first interview since the incident, the CBS News chief foreign correspondent describes her attack, which was perpetrated by an estimated 200-300 men.

Hollywood Reporter

Why Media's Excessive Royal Wedding Coverage Is Appalling and Wrong It has become fashionable to bash the saturation coverage of the royal wedding, but the the problem isn't with the amount of coverage, or even the expense, but with what it costs us. This spectacle illustrates the degree to which profit-driven "giving the people what they want" has undercut journalism's true purpose.

Colby Hall, Mediaite

FCC Offers Public a Chance to Chime in on AT&T-T-Mobile Deal If AT&T joins forces with T-Mobile, the number of top national wireless phone service competitors in the United States will shrink from four to three. The FCC wants to make sure that the move will be in the best interests of the people who keep these companies alive, which is to say, anyone who owns a cellphone. In that spirit, the government agency is turning to the public for opinions on the planned deal.

Adam Rosenberg, Digital Trends

Press Not Buying AT&T Spectrum Claims Even the normally unskeptical and pliable technology press is having a hard time buying any of AT&T's spectrum arguments

Karl Bode, Broadband Reports

Wireless Consolidation: How Did We Get Here? The wireless industry as we know it was built by consolidation, but as more and more people rely on mobile broadband, the stakes are much higher. Do we really want what is effectively a duopoly in wireless to mirror the duopoly we already have in wireline?

Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOM

Shed a Tear: The Age of Broadband Caps Has Begun AT&T has begun restricting more than 16 million broadband users based on the amount of data they use in a month. The No. 2 carrier's entry into the broadband-cap club means that a majority of U.S. broadband users will now be subject to limits on how much they can do online or risk extra charges as ugly as video store late fees.

Ryan Singel, Wired

CBS Plans to Keep Its Spectrum CBS has taken a slightly less adversarial tone toward the FCC's spectrum reclamation plan than the National Association of Broadcasters, group owners representing hundreds of TV stations and state broadcast associations. And since it says it is not going to be selling out its spectrum, or planning to share it with other stations, CBS put an emphasis on the FCC making sure those left behind are still in control of their own destiny.

John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable

Ham Radio Volunteers Worry About Spectrum Plan Across Alabama, emergency communications systems fell silent this week when tornadoes knocked down antennas and cellphone towers. Amateur radio operators are helping to restore emergency communication in some of the areas hardest hit by the storms. But those volunteers say their ability to provide that help is threatened by a new bill in Congress.

Joel Rose, NPR

A new Free Press report, No News Is Bad News: An Analysis of Comcast-NBC Universal Compliance with FCC Localism Conditions, offers the first glimpse of Comcast’s compliance with a merger condition required by the FCC that seeks to increase local news programming at Telemundo and NBC stations owned and operated by Comcast. Read the report here.

FTC May Be on Verge of Launching Google Probe The Federal Trade Commission appears to be in the early stage of a broad antitrust investigation of Google. Agency officials have begun contacting companies recently and signaled that the commission plans to launch a probe of whether Google is abusing its dominance in search and search advertising.

Politico

White House Masters Wild Web Obama’s White House is the first to fully confront the frenetic pace of agenda-setting in the age of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. As the administration struggles to push its own message through the clutter, White House officials are intensifying efforts to maximize their online audience, modernize their message dissemination and integrate that message with mobile applications and other social media tools.

Politico

iPhone and Android Users Face Many Companies Who Want to Know Where They Are The disclosure of a hidden file on iPhones late last month drew an outcry because it seemed to record users' every move. But that isn't the only way mobile phone users' movements are being tracked.

San Jose Mercury News

Facebook Serves 25 Percent of Display Ads Facebook accounted for more than one-quarter -- 25.8 percent -- of all U.S. display ad impressions in the fourth quarter of 2010.

MediaPost

NBC-Comcast Merger Signals End of Versus.com The cable sports channel Versus, which is now under control of NBC Universal, is starting to reflect the recent Comcast-NBC merger. The channel's website, Versus.com is no more, as it is now under the NBC Sports umbrella. Going to Versus.com will redirect you to NBCsports.msnbc.com where there is no Versus branding.

NESN

Company Creates Electronic Chip to Track Hotel Bathrobes Your days of helping yourself to a free hotel towel or bathrobe are over. A Miami company has patented a washable radio frequency identification chip that can be sewn into towels, bathrobes and bed sheets so hotels can keep track of their linens.

Reuters