 Here's What $445,000 Gets You in Congress Maybe it's the water in Washington that's making people silly. Or maybe it's AT&T's hefty campaign spending. Either way, something's got people believing AT&T when it says that up is down, green is red, 1 + 1 = 3 -- and that its proposed takeover of T-Mobile would be good for America. Look no further than the 15 shameless representatives who just signed a letter urging President Obama -- whose Justice Department is suing AT&T to block the deal -- to support a settlement that would enable the merger and give AT&T control over T-Mobile. Josh Levy, SavetheInternet.com AT&T's Congressional Friends Parrot AT&T-T-Mobile Support AT&T has given more campaign contributions than any company since 1989, so it's none too surprising to see 15 members of both parties in Congress send the Obama administration a letter insisting the DoJ should stop blocking the AT&T T-Mobile merger. Representatives like Heath Shuler (D-N.C.), who has seen roughly $25,000 in AT&T cash donations over the course of his political career, were happy to parrot AT&T's merger-benefit claims, apparently unbothered that nearly all of those claims have been thoroughly debunked by rudimentary fact checking. Karl Bode, Broadband Reports Democrats Call for Obama to Approve T-Mobile Acquisition A group of 16 House Democrats is calling for President Obama to direct the Department of Justice to approve AT&T's proposed acquisition of Bellevue-based T-Mobile USA. To any objective eyes, Shuler's letter plainly echoes AT&T's major talking points, including the job-creation study and a pledge to deliver 4G wireless service to 97 percent of Americans. In response, consumer group Free Press wrote that 10 of the 16 Democrats have collectively received more than $445,000 in campaign contributions from AT&T. Nick Eaton, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Free Press Action Fund: Shuler Letter Repeats AT&T's Falsehoods Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) sent a letter to President Barack Obama urging the president to seek a settlement to the Department of Justice's antitrust lawsuit to block the $39 billion merger between AT&T and T-Mobile. The letter was co-signed by 16 House Democrats and relies on several claims about the merger that have been disproved, including assertions that it will create jobs and lead to greater investment in wireless network infrastructure. Free Press  Carriers May Be Handicapping Cellphone Networks New research suggests that wireless operators may unwittingly be degrading performance on their networks as the technology they use to shuttle traffic around their networks gets more and more complex. Marguerite Reardon, CNet EU Wants Stricter Control of Censorship Software Internet applications such as Facebook and Twitter played an important role in the recent Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. Equally important was the use of hardware and software to monitor and block those same Internet applications. The European Parliament has called for the export of eavesdropping and censorship software to be strictly controlled. Hans de Vreji, Radio Netherlands Worldwide FTC: Don't Track Kids Without Parents' Consent The Federal Trade Commission proposed that companies be prohibited from using behavioral-targeting techniques on children under 13 without their parents' permission. Wendy Davis, MediaPost  For Debate Partners, an Unusual Pairing In the pantheon of strange political bedfellows, CNN and the Tea Party could go down as one of the oddest pairings since James Carville and Mary Matalin. CNN, the 24/7 cable news pioneer long derided by conservatives as a mouthpiece of the political left, and Tea Party activists, who pride themselves on bucking the establishment, came together for a presidential debate -- an unusual display of cooperation between the news media and some of its most hostile critics. Jeremy W. Peters and Brian Stelter, New York Times Framing the Jobs Plan ... Er, Second Stimulus President Barack Obama proposed his second stimulus last week, pitching a $450 billion measure. Last go-round, the economic legislation was called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which just goes to show that the Democrats really are clueless when it comes to political language. That somehow never entered the national consciousness. This time, though, the wonky Democrats who put the "Reinvestment" in ARRA seem to have learned their lesson. And the press is playing along, showing clearly how it often lets governments shape the narrative. Ryan Chittum, Columbia Journalism Review Britain's Guardian Hikes Cover Price by 20 Percent Britain's Guardian newspaper, which has led the exposure of a phone-hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid, is to hike its cover price by 20 percent, making it the country's most expensive newspaper. Stacey Higginbotham, Reuters |  This week: A new investigation found that U.S. TV news is turning away from video reporting and to arguing pundits and hypothetical conversations about what might be happening. And it's been 50 years since Newt Minow gave his speech about TV's "vast wasteland." In this digital age, his words still reverberate for the industry, policymakers and public interest advocates. Listen here.  FCC Schedules Field Hearing on Future of Media The FCC has scheduled an Oct. 3 field hearing in Phoenix on the information needs of communities. Scheduled to appear at the hearing are FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Commissioner Michael Copps and Steve Waldman, the principal author of the commission's future of media report. Multichannel News Obama to Sign Off on Patent-System Overhaul President Obama will announce new initiatives the White House says will speed up research breakthroughs from labs to the marketplace as he signs legislation overhauling the nation's patent and trademark laws. The Hill A Database to Help the Military Share Its Airwaves The spectrum shortage is big news. Backed by scary charts and stats from Cisco, and the rationale for a $39 billion merger of AT&T and T-Mobile that the Justice Department is currently fighting, the running narrative is that we want to use a ton of data on our mobile devices and our airwaves aren't going to support it anymore. So we need more spectrum, and we need it now. But what if the solution isn't more spectrum, but rather learning how to share? GigaOM Bunnies, Babies and Broads: What Is TV Trying to Tell Us About Women? Digesting 27 of this fall's new dramas and comedies over a few days of marathon watching has had the strange effect of turning me into even more of a sideline feminist, although I don't know what to do with that or how to articulate it in a way that doesn't quickly make me sound like I'm doing Gloria Steinem drag. On the plus side, women write and produce and star in more TV than ever. But if the only women you ever saw were those on these shows, you would have a hard time believing that a liberation movement had ever occurred. Washington Post Will the Next Broadcast/Cable System Negotiations Result in a La Carte Packaging? is the cable TV subscription -- or satellite or teleco TV subscription -- business ready to break? Most think it can't keep growing unchecked. Will Internet-driven Web video bypass and kill cable? Will connected, smart TVs do it? Will a double-dip recession cut into viewers' ability to pay those growing monthly bills? Will Netflix break its back? Another possibility that might break the stranglehold these companies have over studio-produced TV shows and networks is the potential of viewers to purchase a la carte subscriptions to their favorite TV networks. MediaPost New TV Season, and Fewer Viewers With more young adults tuning out this TV season, the industry is confronting a generation of viewers who say they won't pay the typical $75 monthly cable or satellite bill. Business Week Mandatory PS3 Update Removes Right to Join in a Class-Action Lawsuit Sony has been hit with a number of class-action lawsuits since the launch of the PlayStation 3, mostly due to the decision to retroactively remove Linux support from the console and losing the data of users due to questionable security practices. Sony has a solution to this problem, and it's not beefing up security or retaining the features you paid for: If you accept the next mandatory system update, you sign away your ability to take part in a class-action lawsuit. The only option left for consumers if they agree is binding individual arbitration. Ars Technica Netflix Stock Tanked -- Here's Why Netflix shares have fallen 15 percent after the company issued new guidance on domestic subscriber numbers for the third quarter. The company, which originally expected 25 million users by the end of this month, has lowered that number by 1 million subscribers, as it feels the effects of a change in its pricing. GigaOM   |
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