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FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, critics warn, is aiming to “destroy the internet as we know it and give even more gatekeeper power to a few huge companies like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon.”

Federal regulators took steps Thursday to ease broadcast-ownership restrictions, a move seen as favorable for the Sinclair Broadcast Group’s proposed $3.9 billion takeover of Tribune Media.

Poor people would be cut off from their communities and from potential employers under a proposal approved Thursday to dramatically shrink a program Ronald Reagan created to subsidize phone service for the destitute.

WASHINGTON — On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission voted along party lines to erase several longstanding media-ownership limits that prevented one broadcast company from controlling too much media in a single market.

Injecting President Donald Trump’s business-friendly, anti-regulation urges into the media business, the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission approved sweeping rollbacks of rules designed to limit monopoly control of local broadcast properties.

In an age of massive deregulation, will fact-based journalism become an endangered species?

WASHINGTON — The FCC voted along party lines on Thursday to move forward plans to eviscerate the Lifeline program, which provides a modest $9.25 monthly subsidy to most recipients so that millions of poor people can connect to communications services.

The FCC voted along party lines Thursday to permit broadcasters to own multiple TV stations in every market, regardless of size, by eliminating the so-called eight-voice test.

The FCC wants to roll back landmark media-ownership regulations that prohibit owning a television station and newspaper in the same market and making it easier to acquire additional TV or radio stations, Chairman Ajit Pai said on Wednesday.

The Lifeline service, which aims to give broadband to low-income people, has been derided by conservatives.