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The Alliance for Community Media applauds Wisconsin Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin for introducing the Community Access Preservation (CAP) Act of 2009 (PDF) to address the challenges faced by public, education, and government (PEG) TV channels and community access television stations. Read more.

OpenMedia.ca and the Council of Canadians are raising concerns about what the CanWest filing for bankruptcy protection means for increased concentration and foreign ownership of Canadian media. The organizations are calling on the federal government to use the filing as an opportunity to expand media democracy in Canada rather than use it as a pretext for potentially reducing foreign ownership restrictions on Canadian Media. “Following the failed business model already employed by the Aspers and Goldman Sachs in television has been a profound mistake for CanWest,” says Garry Neil, a Council of Canadians board member and cultural policy expert. “It is worrisome that the Aspers might be kept around in order to satisfy ownership rules, possibly just as window dressing to mask a major foreign takeover of Canadian media.” Read more.

Broadband stimulus money watchers and recovery plan tea leaf readers are cheering news of the first winners of the Department of Commerce's grants program for broadband mapping projects. They're pleased that the recipients are independent state agencies rather than groups affiliated with the telco/cable-backed non-profit Connected Nation. "We hope that trend continues," Connected's outspoken critic Art Brodsky at Public Knowledge told us. Other observers think that it will. Read more.

Net neutrality has become a contentious issue within the media, among pundits and in Congress, generating an edginess on par with healthcare reform discussions. But what does this debate mean to Smalltown, USA, and rural America? On the face of it, net neutrality is a fairly simple issue, but beneath the surface complex potential benefits and competing interests are churning up a lot of turbulence. In particular, incumbents – the large telecom and cable companies such as AT&T and Comcast, with existing Internet access services – are not happy. Read more.

A total of 80 companies are now distancing themselves from Fox's media hate. ColorOfChange.org has confirmed that 19 new companies whose ads aired recently during Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck program have asked Fox to stop their ads from running or pledged to not to run ads on the show going forward. The latest additions include Equifax, Hoffman La Roche, Schiff Nutrition, Subaru, and Toyota-Lexus. This after Beck called President Obama a “racist” who “has a deep-seated hatred for white people” during an appearance on Fox & Friends. The news comes on the heels of stories that broke throughout British newspapers on Monday, reporting that advertisers seen during Beck’s program in England are feeling the heat as well. Diageo, maker of Guinness and Tanqueray, cut their advertising ties with Beck, as did Waitrose, a supermarket chain which is not only taking a stance against Glenn Beck, but also against Fox News Channel as a whole. Read more.

Sweden ranks third in the world in average Internet connection speed, way ahead of the US. The report by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) said the average download speed in South Korea is 20.4 megabits per second (mbps) -- four times faster than the US average of 5.1 mbps, ranked 28th. Read more.

KPFA listeners know that Local Station Board elections tend to be acrimonious. What many listeners might not realize is that the controversy of the LSB elections actually reflects a historical issue about the nature of community radio itself. The four of us founded the Independents for Community Radio affinity group of LSB candidates with the goal of ensuring that KPFA remains rooted in the communities it serves. In October 2008, nearly 90 KPFA staff members issued a statement articulating their goals for leadership at the station. They called for management committed to fulfilling the historic Transformation Proposal made during the 1999 KPFA Lockout. They also called for leaders who support the unpaid staff, maintain a respectful and collaborative approach to station operations, and understand that KPFA should include community representatives on its decision making bodies. These aspirations remain largely unfulfilled or have been undermined by the current management and its Concerned Listener allies. Read more.

House Republican leaders complained Friday to President Obama that net neutrality rules proposed by the Federal Communications Commission could deter investment in broadband networks and hurt the economy. House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House Republican whip, wrote in a letter to the president that the FCC, led by chairman Julius Genachowski, should focus on its congressional mandate to come up with a plan to bring high-speed Internet access to all U.S. homes instead of net neutrality rules. The net neutrality rules would be a separate proceeding from the national broadband plan that is due to Congress in Feb. 2010. Read more.

Federal regulators are virtually certain to scrutinize any substantial pairing of cable leader Comcast (CMSCA) and content behemoth NBC Universal, the two media giants at the center of a frenzy of merger speculation, according to antitrust experts. If consummated, the mega-media merger would combine NBC Universal's vast stable of content with Comcast's giant digital-distribution network. "It's virtually guaranteed that FCC [Federal Communications Commission] regulators would review this deal," Glenn Manishin, a former antitrust counsel and trial attorney at the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, told DailyFinance. "This could be a signature case for Chairman [Julius] Genachowski to demonstrate the principles he enunciated when he was confirmed." Manishin predicted any deal would also face review by the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department. Read more.

In the ongoing struggle between the White House and the FOX News Channel, the Obama administration's direct rebuttal of what FOX's Glenn Beck and a guest have had to say this week about the administration's hand in Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympic Summer Games may seem like a footnote. But it's emblematic of something bigger: An administration's refusal to play ball with a widely watched cable news network which it views as slanted is escalating to an administration's willingness to challenge commentators on the network for fast and loose foot-play with the facts - or, more specifically in this case, Glenn Beck's carelessness. Read more.

In the wake of reports that Google Voice is blocking calls to “traffic stimulator” sites (like free conference calling and free porn sites), Speakeasy has now changed its terms of service to explicitly block calls to these sites with its VOIP product. To its credit, Speakeasy directly informed its users (a friend forwarded me the email reproduced below). But this now elevates the question of VOIP providers and calls to a new level. Read more.

Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Russ Feingold (D-WI), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) announced today that they will introduce the Retroactive Immunity Repeal Act, which eliminates retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that allegedly participated in President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program. “I believe we best defend America when we also defend its founding principles,” said Dodd. “We make our nation safer when we eliminate the false choice between liberty and security. But by granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies who may have participated in warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, the Congress violated the protection of our citizen’s privacy and due process right and we must not allow that to stand.” Read more.

NBC Universal executives declined to deny a report Wednesday night that Comcast, the cable giant, is in talks to buy the television and movie company from General Electric. Comcast also did not deny the report that bankers for the two sides discussed a possible deal Tuesday in New York. Such talks often lead nowhere, but rumors have circulated for months that GE might be looking to unload the news and entertainment company. NBC is stuck in fourth place among broadcast networks, and Universal Studios is enduring a rough movie season. Read more.

In recent weeks, the ombudsmen (or “public editor”) of both The New York Times and The Washington Post have chastised their respective papers for paying too little attention to right-wing agitation on talk radio, cable news, and the blogosphere. In order to dampen charges of bias for the Times’ tempered coverage of the Van Jones and ACORN scandals—we wrote about the former here and the latter here—the paper has announced the creation of an editor to monitor the “opinion media.” Read more.

Independent research from two university professors raises important questions about the way major news outlets frame stories -- and offers hard evidence that ACORN has been treated unfairly. The report describes how "opinion entrepreneurs" (primarily business and conservative groups and individuals) set the story in motion as early as 2006, how the "conservative echo chamber" orchestrated its anti-ACORN campaign in 2008, how the McCain-Palin campaign picked it up, and how the mainstream media reported these allegations without investigating their truth or falsity. Read more.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is still looking for ideas on how to bring broadband to all corners of the U.S. and to increase subscriber numbers, said the director of the agency's broadband project. The FCC is about midway through a year-long effort to create a national broadband plan, and Blair Levin, executive director of the FCC's omnibus broadband initiative, said Tuesday he hopes he hasn't heard all the good ideas yet. "There's a lot of capacity for us to hear your good ideas," Levin said during a broadband policy discussion hosted by the Media and Democracy Coalition and OneWebDay. The U.S. Congress, in legislation passed early this year, required the FCC to create a national broadband plan, with a goal of providing universal broadband. Getting to universal broadband in the U.S. will take a coordinated effort by many groups, Levin said. Read more.

You won't hear Bruce Springsteen on KXIT ("Your home for the classics") in the Texas Panhandle -- or Sheryl Crow or Tim McGraw or Rod Stewart or dozens of other artists either. It's not their music that station owner George Chambers finds objectionable. It's their membership in MusicFirst, a coalition that wants to change the law to require AM and FM radio stations to pay royalties for the music they broadcast. Other radio stations across the country have allegedly refused to air the group's advertisements supporting performance-royalty legislation, as well as blackballed individual artists who are members. Now the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is being called upon to investigate whether such tactics run afoul of broadcasters' obligation to serve the public interest. The agency put out a notice last month seeking information regarding whether broadcasters are "targeting and threatening artists" or engaging in a media campaign that "disseminates falsities," and to determine the effect of refusing to air the ads. The commission is also being asked to take the stations' conduct into account when it comes time to renew their broadcast licenses. Read more.

Has anyone watched the English-language version of Al Jazeera lately? The Qatar-based Arab TV channel’s eclectic internationalism—a feast of vivid, pathbreaking coverage from all continents—is a rebuke to the dire predictions about the end of foreign news as we know it. Indeed, if Al Jazeera were more widely available in the United States—on nationwide cable, for example, instead of only on the Web and several satellite stations and local cable channels—it would eat steadily into the viewership of The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer. Al Jazeera—not Lehrer—is what the internationally minded elite class really yearns for: a visually stunning, deeply reported description of developments in dozens upon dozens of countries simultaneously. Read more.

On Wednesday night, the City Council of this town of 32,000 distanced itself from Mayor Bud Norris, who plans to give the keys to the city to talk-show personality Glenn Beck on Saturday. The seven-member council unanimously passed a resolution proposed by member Dale Ragan that stated, "Mount Vernon City Council is in no way sponsoring the Mayor's event on September 26, 2009 and is not connected to the Glenn Beck event in any manner." Read more.

Groups criticize Beck, Dobbs and other "Mad Haters" for misusing the media to spread hate, fear and lies Civil rights organizations representing a broad range of Northwest communities came together this week to condemn hateful and deceptive messages which have become prevalent in the national media. The joint statement comes on the eve of Fox News broadcaster Glenn Beck's visit to Washington State, during which he will receive the key to the City of Mt. Vernon in a widely criticized move by Mayor Bud Norris. Read more.