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ews of the movement for July 18, 2011

Troubles that Money Can't Dispel Time and again in the United States and elsewhere, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has used blunt force spending to skate past judgment, agreeing to payments to settle legal cases and, undoubtedly more important, silence its critics. That kind of strategy provides a useful window into the larger corporate culture at a company that is now engulfed by a wildfire burning out of control in London, sparked by the hacking of a murdered young girl's phone and fed by a steady stream of revelations about seedy, unethical and sometimes criminal behavior at the company's newspapers.

David Carr, New York Times

U.S. Attorney General Says Probe Progressing into News Corp. Investigations are progressing into the U.S. operations of News Corp. after the UK phone hacking scandal, U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder said.

Rob Taylor, Reuters

Rupert Murdoch Phone-Hacking Scandal: U.S. Connections Grow Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is used to ruling his vast publishing and broadcasting empire with transcontinental authority. But now, he finds himself in an unusual and no doubt uncomfortable position: Having to issue a series of apologies for his organization's "serious wrongdoing" as he watches some of his top lieutenants leave under fire. Meanwhile, critics muse that Murdoch's free-wheeling and politically conservative hand in British reporting may have influenced American journalism as well

Brad Knickerbocker, Christian Science Monitor

News Corp. Scrambles to Contain Damage in U.S. News Corp. is attempting to do on U.S. soil what it failed to accomplish in London: Contain the damage of a scandal over dubious reporting tactics at one of its British tabloids.

Russell Adams and Jessica E. Vascellaro, Wall Street Journal

Inside Rebekah Brooks' News of the World Journalists who worked at News of the World under editor Rebekah Brooks describe an industrialized operation of dubious information-gathering, reporters under intense pressure attempting to land exclusive stories by whatever means necessary, and a culture of fear, cynicism, gallows humor and fierce internal competition.

Georgina Prodhan and Kate Holton, Reuters

Britain's Phone-Hacking Scandal and the Power of Newspapers One lesson of the great scandal unfolding in Britain is that newspapers can choose to use their power for bread and circuses and to accumulate more and more power. That works, at least until it doesn't. Or they can use their power for public service -- to explain, to encourage and shape honest debate, and best of all, to expose the abuse of power of any kind, even of other news outlets. In the end, the public will appreciate that, and perhaps repay the kindness with loyalty.

Mike Hoyt, Los Angeles Times

The Murdoch Empire's Heart of Darkness Like almost everyone on the planet who was themselves not directly involved with the wiretapping, blackmailing, obstruction of justice and corruption of both law enforcement and the political process in which Murdoch employees and acolytes so regularly engaged, I never imagined just how black the heart of this operation was. Pick any aspect of the scandal you like and you'll find yourself asking, "Does owning a media empire exempt you from the fundamental laws of human decency as well as journalistic responsibility?"

Eric Alterman, Center for American Progress

Rupert Murdoch Went too Far One of the few values Rupert Murdoch and I share is the importance of a free press. We recognize that, if we lose free expression in the media, we will have lost everything. And, perhaps most important, we understand that in the quest to protect this freedom, boundaries must be pushed. The way in which we push those boundaries, however, is where we differ.

Larry Flynt, Washington Post

Piling on? That Would Be News Corp. A recent segment of "Fox News Watch" took on the media's coverage of the News Corp. scandal. The highlight came out of the mouth of syndicated columnist Cal Thomas: "This is the biggest case of piling on since the last rugby game I saw. The left has been out to get News Corp., especially Fox News Channel, for years." Predictable comment from someone at Fox, which is a property of News Corp. And predictable comment in the midst of any public scandal. Yet reality in this case appears to be running in the opposite direction.

Erik Wemple, Washington Post

Rep. Inslee Worried AT&T Merger Will Kill Jobs Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) wrote to the chief executives of AT&T and T-Mobile to question whether the proposal to combine their companies would cost jobs.

Sara Jerome, National Journal

If Phone Giants Merge: A Rural Take The AT&T-T-Mobile merger may produce the most profound effects on rural customers who have already been ill served by the major communication carriers in the past. The merger could result in a less competitive system, with the remaining companies continuing to cite the same lack of incentive to invest that has hampered rural networks to date.

Parul P. Desai, Daily Yonder

Five Myths About the T-Mobile-AT&T Takeover While the government remains caught between two very separate sides of the AT&T takeover of T-Mobile, consumer advocate group Free Press is continuing its approach of debunking AT&T's argument that the takeover is necessary.

TmoNews

10 Ways Mobile Carriers Burn Customers The cost of owning a mobile device can be pretty high and it doesn't help that the carriers that are supposed to be taking care of you are more often than not trying to take advantage of you. Here are some of the ways that mobile carriers take advantage of consumers.

Adam Mills, GottaBeMobile

How Canada's Internet just got Worse As bad as Internet access is in Canada, it just got worse. Shaw Communications, a Canadian telecom company and Internet service provider announced they are launching Movie Club, a new service to compete with Netflix. On the surface this sounds like a good thing. More offerings should mean more competition, more choice and lower prices. Look closer and you learn the very opposite is going on.

David Eaves, eaves.ca

Where Will Broadband Competition Take Philadelphia? For many years, broadband Internet in Philadelphia was only available to large companies and institutions with the budget to literally build connections. But Verizon's successful push to bring FiOS to the city has spurred Internet service providers operating in Philadelphia to compete. The result, city officials say, is that residents will pay less for better service.

Chris Reber, Technically Philly

West Virginia Might Leave $40M in Broadband Stimulus Funds on the Table West Virginia, like many states that applied for broadband stimulus funding, had high hopes for the $126 million grant it won last year, but now it appears that the state might not be able to spend $30 to $40 million of the grant.

Sean Buckley, FierceTelecom

Is Internet Access a Human Right? When the governments in Egypt and Syria tried to control the flow of information from citizens by blocking Internet access and other forms of communication, the worldwide perception of these acts was that they were sinister and cruel. Was the impact so dramatic because Internet access has reached the status of a basic need -- like clean water or electricity?

Jan Chipchase, CNN

Rupert Murdoch and other News Corp. executives are at the center of a shocking British media scandal that involves spying, bribery, corruption, a corporate cover-up and even murder. And now there are reports that his company’s alleged criminal behavior -- including the hacking of the phones of September 11 victims -- has crossed the Atlantic. Tell your member of Congress to demand an immediate investigation into News Corp.'s activities in the U.S. It's time to hold Rupert Murdoch accountable.

Wireless Jobs Vanish The U.S. wireless industry is booming as more consumers and businesses snap up smartphones, tablet computers and billions of wireless applications. But for the industry's workers, the story is less rosy.

Wall Street Journal

Free Press Action Fund Slams House Majority's Innovation-Killing Spectrum Bill The House Commerce Committee held a hearing to address wireless spectrum and public safety issues. The hearing follows the recent release of draft legislation called the "Spectrum Innovation Act of 2011" by the committee's majority staff. The draft proposes a slew of harmful changes to spectrum allocation and spectrum management policy, including an untested and unwise system for auctioning off unlicensed spectrum.

Free Press

Lawmakers Spar over Spectrum Policy Democrats and Republicans promoted their competing visions for reforming wireless spectrum regulation at a recent House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing.

The Hill

Court Ruling Heartens Media Watchdogs in Advance of FCC Ownership Rules Review Supporters of diverse local media and champions of competition among news outlets are celebrating the recent U.S. Court of Appeals verdict in Prometheus Radio Project v. the FCC. The court rejected FCC rules that would have opened up ownership to further corporate consolidation. In the wake of the egregious overstepping by media mogul Rupert Murdoch's uber British tabloid News of the World, the ruling has taken on an heroic cast.

Colorado Independent

FCC Revives Commercial Ad Limit Audits for Cable, Satellite The FCC has revived its audits of cable and satellite operators for compliance with ad limits in kids shows. That came after conversations with the Government Accounting Office over a just-released report to Congress on the FCC's implementation of the Children's Television Act and trends in children's programming.

Multichannel News

A New Try at Curbing Piracy This month, several major Internet service providers, including Verizon, Comcast, AT&T and Time Warner Cable, agreed to help movie studios and record labels identify Internet users who downloaded copyrighted content illicitly, warn them about the piracy and punish recalcitrant abusers. The agreement has troubling elements.

New York Times

Mexico Adds Juice to Public Broadcasters Mexico is planning a $45.5 million expansion of pubcasters as a nationwide alternative to commercial giants Televisa and TV Azteca.

Variety

Women's World Cup Soccer Final Scores New Twitter Record After an epic run, the U.S. women's soccer team succumbed to Japan in the final of the Women's World Cup tournament. And if you were paying attention to your Twitter stream, you may have seen an influx of Tweets about the game, which ended in a penalty shootout. Twitter just announced that the Women's World Cup final scored a new record with 7,196 Tweets per second.

TechCrunch

App Developers Withdraw from U.S. As Patent Fears Reach 'Tipping Point' App developers are withdrawing their products for sale from the U.S. versions of Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market for fear of being sued by companies which own software patents -- just as a Mumbai-based company has made a wide-ranging claim against Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo and a number of other companies over Twitter-style feeds, for which it claims it has applied for a patent.

The Guardian

China: 1.3 Million Websites Shut in 2010 The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said there were were 41 percent fewer websites at the end of 2010 than a year earlier. Chinese officials have tightened regulations on the internet in recent years, and they launched a crackdown on pornography websites in 2009.

BBC News

HTC Status Phone and Its Facebook Button The HTC Status has hit AT&T and Best Buy stores will is the first phone released with its own Facebook button. But what exactly does a Facebook button do? Well, so far, it makes sharing a status message or photo to Facebook even more simple than it already is on Google's Android operating system.

Los Angeles Times