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WASHINGTON — On Tuesday, Free Press, the Media Access Project, Public Knowledge and the Greenlining Institute filed a letter with the Federal Communications Commission requesting that Verizon, SpectrumCo and Cox Communications make unredacted versions of their joint operating and marketing agreements in their spectrum deals available to parties in the proceeding.

WASHINGTON — On Monday, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it will solicit ideas for new research on barriers to entry for small businesses and underrepresented groups to participate in the communications and media industries.

On Friday night, Arizona State University (ASU) responded to thousands of complaints from ASU students and Free Press activists and stopped blocking student access to the popular petition website Change.org.

On Saturday, six journalists, many with press credentials, were arrested when Oakland, Calif. police clashed with Occupy protesters. These arrests bring the total number of journalists detained in Occupy protests nationwide to nearly 50. Free Press has been tracking journalist arrests and press suppression related to the Occupy movement since September.

WASHINGTON — On Monday, Rep. Ed Markey will introduce a discussion draft of a bill aimed at giving cellphone users more information on the monitoring software that may exist on their phones. The bill would also require disclosure of how any data that software collects is used and shared.

WASHINGTON — On Thursday, Free Press released Citizens Inundated, a report that follows the money trail from big-spending political donors to the bank accounts of the nation’s largest broadcast companies.

WASHINGTON — On Tuesday, the Free Press Action Fund called on Congress to return campaign donations from the Motion Picture Association of America.

In an interview last week, MPAA President Chris Dodd, a former U.S. senator, threatened to cut off campaign donations to members of Congress who vote against legislation the MPAA supports.

WASHINGTON – On Friday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced he would delay a vote on the PROTECT IP Act. A cloture vote on the controversial legislation had been scheduled for Tuesday.

Craig Aaron, president and CEO of the Free Press Action Fund, made the following statement:

WASHINGTON – On Thursday, News Corp. admitted to British officials that “senior employees and directors” of the company’s British newspaper division, News Group Newspapers, knew about illegal phone hacking by News of the World staff “and sought to conceal it by deliberately deceiving investigators and destroying evidence.”

WASHINGTON — On Thursday, Verizon Wireless, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox and Bright House Networks announced that they would provide the Federal Communications Commission with copies of the companies’ joint marketing agreements to resell each other’s services.