By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 6-29-18 Limited-government groups want the FCC to limit the mandates in its enforcement of children's programming legislation dating from the early 1990s, while a prominent kids TV group sees it slightly differently, while agreeing changes are needed. The FCC is tentatively proposing to eliminate a number of children's TV [...]

By Mark Sherman, AP, washingtonpost.com, 6-27-18 The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that government workers can’t be forced to contribute to labor unions that represent them in collective bargaining, dealing a serious financial blow to Democratic-leaning organized labor. The court’s conservative majority, re-empowered by Justice Neil Gorsuch, scrapped a 41-year-old decision that had allowed states to [...]

By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 6-26-18 A majority of respondents to a new poll said they don't trust Facebook with their personal data and an even larger majority say "large internet and technology companies" should be more heavily regulated. That is according to a national telephone poll of 1,001 registered voters conducted June [...]

By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 6-25-18 Network neutrality activists have been playing up doom-and-gloom scenarios of internet service providers blocking, throttling or engaging in paid prioritization with impunity, now that FCC rules against those practices are gone. But the matter is not quite so black and white, or in this case black and [...]

By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 6-21-18 The FCC is tentatively proposing to eliminate a number of children's TV rules, and seeks comment on changing others, tentatively concluding that educational and informational programming does not have to be at least a half-hour in length and regularly scheduled. The agency also proposes cutting the frequency [...]

By Robert Barnes, washingtonpost.com, 6-14-18 The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down Minnesota’s ban on wearing “political” apparel to polling places, saying that the state’s intentions may be good but that its law was too broad and open to differing interpretations. The 7-to-2 decision, written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., was careful not [...]

By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 6-12-18 A federal district court has ruled that AT&T and Time Warner can get together, making the Trump administration's Justice Department the loser in the high-profile legal case. That came in a highly anticipated announcement by D.C. District Court Judge Richard Leon, who had signaled weeks ago that [...]

By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 6-11-18 As activists talking web doom and gloom pushed for a congressional rollback of the FCC's network neutrality rule deregulation taking effect Monday, fans of the FCC move were weighing in, including calling for Congress to step in to create new rules not based in Title II common [...]

By Ann E. Marimow, washingtonpost.com, 5-30-18 Advertisements promoting the American Civil Liberties Union’s upcoming national conference in Washington, D.C., will not appear at Metro stations or on buses, after a federal judge refused Wednesday to force the D.C. regional transit agency to accept the ads. The decision from U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan upholds [...]

By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 5-25-18 Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr signaled this week he thought reports of the impending death of the internet were highly overrated. In an interview for C-SPAN's Communicators series, Carr said that on June 11, when the FCC's network neutrality regulation rollback takes effect, consumers "are not going [...]