News

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.

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.

Congressional Democrats are requesting an internal investigation at the Federal Communications Commission into whether Ajit Pai, the FCC’s Republican chairman, has been improperly rolling back regulations to help the Sinclair Broadcasting Group secure a controversial merger that would allow the right-leaning company to reach 72 percent of the nation’s television viewers.

The head of the Federal Communications Commission is set to unveil plans next week for a final vote to reverse a landmark 2015 Net Neutrality order barring the blocking or slowing of web content, two people briefed on the plans said.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission plans to vote to overturn open-internet protections at its open meeting on Dec. 14, according to a report Wednesday from Bloomberg News.

Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, reportedly urged a top executive at CNN’s parent company to fire a fifth of its staff over its coverage of the presidential election.

If Hillary Clinton had been elected president, this week’s news that the Department of Justice was seeking tough remedies from AT&T before allowing it to take over Time Warner would have been lauded by consumer campaigners and condemned by pro-business Republicans.

AT&T’s proposed $85-billion purchase of Time Warner is encountering stiff resistance from the Department of Justice, which is pressuring the companies to sell Time Warner’s news channel, CNN, to win approval of the deal.

The opposition — which some analysts called “unprecedented” — threatens to scuttle a massive media deal.

The Justice Department has informed AT&T that it will oppose the company’s planned $85-billion merger unless it sells off CNN — a network frequently derided by President Trump.

President Trump, who has repeatedly derided CNN’s coverage of his administration as “fake news,” has loomed over the deal since the companies announced it.