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The Federal Communications Commission allows a transfer of licenses after the Spanish broadcaster comes to a deal with the Department of Justice to resolve national security concerns.

If the U.S. government regulated streamers as it does broadcasters, would the Trump Administration stand better ground in objecting to Chinese influence over TikTok? The answer is undoubtedly yes, but if proof is required, check out a decision that was quietly made by theFederal Communications Commission just before Christmas. As TikTok wages a thus-far-successful fight against theU.S. government for attempting to impede the app over national security concerns, Univision has gone in a different direction. According to an opinion from the FCC's Media Bureau, Univision can exceed 25 percent foreign ownership and transfer licenses thanks to a recent deal the Spanish broadcaster made with the Justice Department. The agreement, which became public earlier this month but has until now remained under the radar, allows for much greater oversight in how Univision handles data and indeed its larger business.

Back in February, Univision struck a deal to sell a controlling stake to private equity firm Searchlight Capital, which according to filings, is controlled by partners in United States, Canada, and Germany.Mexican TV giant Televisa, which supplies much of Univision's programming, would retain its significant stake as well. The dealmaking had Univision seeking authorization from the FCC to exceed the 25 percent foreign investment benchmark with aruling permitting up to 100 percent aggregate foreign investment. That was on the table because of FCC decisions near the beginning of Ajit Pai's term as chairman that opened the doorto full foreign ownership of U.S. broadcast stations.

In this instance, Univision's move to transfer control of licenses and its petition for a declaratory ruling ran into opposition from various Hispanic groups as well as theNew York and California Attorneys General, who voiced concern howallowing Univision to become foreign-ownedwould result in less competition, diversity, and localism, contrary to the public interest.

There was also an objection filed bythe Media Research Center, which pointed to Univision's ties with the Clintons and alleged Televisa's links to Mexico's Revolutionary Institutional Party.

In the FCC's Dec. 23 opinion (read here), theMedia Bureau shrugs that off. "The Commission does not involve itself in content-based programming decisions," states the decision. "Indeed the Commission has repeatedly recognized that a licensee has broad discretion based on its right to free speech under the First Amendment to choose the programming that it believes best serves the needs and interests of the members of its viewers."

Other than forcing divestitures of some Puerto Rico stations (which Univision agrees to do), the FCC doesn't see any good reason to stand in the way of Univision's deal with foreigners, especially in light of the deal that Univision hasmade with the Justice Department.

That deal is remarkable in light of the legal fight between the U.S. government and TikTok.

According to the terms (read the full agreement below), Univision agrees to maintaina security officer who will have access to Univision's business information and be available to answer any concerns raised by the government. Additionally, Univision agrees to screen new employees given access to data and provide 30 days of notice to the Justice Department if access is providedto any foreign government, person, or entity. Furthermore, Univision agrees to provide additional notice to the DOJ of any material business change including corporate structure changes, business model changes, and even a change in headquarter location.

Univision also consents to an annual report concerning compliance and allow the government to interview its employees, among more commitments.

A day before the FCC's media bureau granted approval, Univision attorneys met with an advisor toCommissioner Geoffrey Starks to discuss the benefits of allowing greater foreign investment in U.S. stations. The lawyers touted how access to broader sources of capital would allow U.S. broadcasters to compete on a level playing field with other content providers and distributors.

Today, Univision celebrated closing its deal.

See the article here:
Univision Agrees to Greater Oversight to Win Government Nod on Foreign Ownership - Hollywood Reporter

Senator McGuire has reintroduced SB 98, which will extend crucial protections to members of the press as they enter and report on events protected by the First Amendment.

Freedom of the press is foundational to our country. It strengthens our democracy by providing transparency, keeping a check on government, and informing our everyday decisions. But this freedom is under assault here in the United States.

Intentional attacks or detainments of reporters and members of the press in the United States in 2020 increased significantly, particularly during the nationwide anti-racism protests according to the US Press Freedom Tracker, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

At least 117 verified cases of journalists being arrested or detained have been documented this year, a 1200% increase over 2019. More than 36% ofthese arrests and detainments were accompanied by an assault (source: Freedom of the Press Foundation).

In 2020, reporters have been hit by rubber bullets, struck with batons, sprayed with tear gas, and detained, all while performing their critical role of documenting and informing the public of current events.

Members of the press risk their personal health and safety each time they attend protests or rallies to get the public the information they need and deserve. Rubber bullets, tear gas, and detainment cannot be the new norm for members of the press. California must lead the way to ensure the freedom of the press and the First Amendment are protected and held to the highest standard, Senator McGuire said.

SB 98 will ensure that journalists are protected as they attend demonstrations, marches, protests, and rallies. It will prohibit law enforcement officers from obstructing, detaining, assaulting, or otherwise preventing the press from fulfilling their constitutional mandate in reporting on these events.

Additionally, the bill mandates that reporters can challenge their detainment or lack of access by working with law enforcement management on scene. This provides a necessary safety net to reporters who are not granted access or intentionally detained or mistakenly detained.

Recent police action demonstrates that these statutory protections are critical to ensure our democratic system has access to newsworthy information to inform the discussion on the crucial issues that California and the nation face.

During protests throughoutCalifornia,numerous reporters were injuredduringincidents with law enforcement.Some examples:

While California law allows reporters and members of the press to enter natural disaster emergency areas for the purpose of gathering information, these protections do not expressly extend to protests. SB 98 provides these protections.

A version of this legislation passed the Senate and Assembly last legislative session, but was vetoed by the Governor. Senator McGuire, the bills co-authors and support coalition believe the need to protect the first amendment and the press freedom is greater than ever and will be working with the Governor to gain his support this year.

The legislation is supported by the California News Publishers Association, The California Broadcasters Association, California Black Media, Impremedia, Ethnic Media Services and the First Amendment Coalition.

The legislation is co-authored by: Senators Wiener, Gonzalez, Portantino and Assemblymembers Wicks and Carrillo.

View original post here:
Senator McGuire Reintroduces Legislation to Protect Press and Journalists From Being Intentionally Attacked and Detained - Redheaded Blackbelt

What happened in 2020? Governments and politics fed an insatiable press and social media to threaten the world with fear and misinformation. World forces and powers slowly but surely swung the pendulum toward the far LEFT in the names of safety and unity. Governing authorities around the world did not waste the crisis, but used it to build power over people.

Next year will be better and worse than 2020. Nations will welcome America back into the world community, agreements will be made, and resources will be shared mainly from here to there. Which historic empire brought the most peace and safety to all the peoples of the world? What attributes and powers do all world empires share? What will 2021 bring?

The strongest drive within the heart of the human race is for power. State and local politicians made the rules and mandates for fighting the pandemic. In his December 21 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Scott Atlas, special adviser to President Trump this past fall, noted, nearly all states used the same draconian policies that people now insist on hardening, even though the number of positive cases increased while peoples movements were constrained, business activities were strictly limited, and schools were closed.

Atlas continued, Mobility tracking verifies that people restricted their movement. Gallup and YouGov data show that 80% to 90% of Americans have been wearing masks since early August. Lockdown policies had baleful effects on local economies, families and children, and the virus spread anyway. If one advocates more lockdowns because of bad outcomes so far, why dont the results of those lockdowns matter? Good question, Dr. Atlas!

Then he wrote, empirical data from the U.S., Europe and Japan show that lockdowns dont eliminate the virus and dont stop the virus from spreading. They do, however, create extremely harmful health and social problems beyond a dramatic drop in learning, including a tripling of reported depression, skyrocketing suicidal ideation, unreported child abuse, skipped visits for cancer and other medical care.

In other words, the draconian policies mandated by local and state authorities in the name of health and safety brought even more problems which were predicted though not reported at the time. Meanwhile, the press and social media scared us into giving up our First Amendment freedoms with false and misleading political warnings of life and death.

In the next few years world leaders will join forces to bring nations into ruling coalitions. This in turn will draw rogue nations into wars around the globe, and those wars will cause famines that will increase the spread of inevitable pestilences. World leaders will unite in declaring that wars are leading to peace and that famines will be replaced with prosperity for all ... not for the first time.

What will people believe? Will we believe explanations for what we see with our own eyes? Explanations will supersede science and evidence, because people will believe rational lies and deny truth. Later, people will tire of hearing the truth to the extent that they will hate the truth believing it is evil and the source of all problems.

What really happened in 2020 is prelude to what will happen quickly over the next few years. It wasnt the pandemic. Watch world leaders and politics, and critically examine whats being peddled as news and facts.

__

Daniel L. Gardner is a syndicated columnist who lives in Starkville, Miss. You may contact him at PJandMe2@gmail.com.

Read the original here:
What really happened in 2020? - Daily Mountain Eagle

The years-long legal battle between a Warren company and an Indiana County township has taken a new turn.

Pennsylvania General Energy, based in Warren, has filed suit in federal district court against Grant Township seeking an injunction that would prohibit the township from enforcing a home rule charter that purports to prohibit PGEs intention to operate an oil and gas wastewater injection well.

In 2014, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued permits for PGE to convert the well and, in response, Grant Township crafted a Community Bill of Rights aimed at prohibiting PGEs proposed activity as a means of protecting the water supply in their community.

PGE challenged the constitutionality of the ordinance and ultimately settled with Grant Township for $1 dollar while elements of the ordinance were struck down on constitutional grounds.

In 2017, the state Department of Environmental Protection approved the injection well proposal and took the township to court to determine if its local rules would supersede state law. DEP won that case.

That did not stop the township.

According to an order from federal Western District of Pennsylvania Judge Susan Paradise Baxter filed in late March 2019, the township even after the ordinance was adjudged preempted by state law, Grant Township sought to make an end-run around the judicial determination by amending its form of government and adopting the preempted and constitutionally deficient provisions in the form of a Home Rule Charter.

The two parties settled a case in the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals back in 2019. A stipulation in that case stated that all participated in the Third Circuits Mediation program, amicably resolving the claims of all parties and resulting in the withdrawal of all appeals and the discontinuance of all appellate proceedings with prejudice.

This most recent suit was filed on Dec. 9.

PGE alleges in that filing that DEP issued a permit to use the well as an injection well in March 27 but rescinded the permit due to the home rule charter (HRC). They claim they have tried to sell the well but cant do so because of the conditions in the home rule charter.

The filing raises 11 specific counts including First Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment as well as due process and equal protection issues and asks for a preliminary and permanent injunction prohibiting any action to enforce the home rule charter and an entry of judgement declaring that the HRC is void and unenforceable in its entirety.

PGE further argues that they have been precluded from operating the Yanity Well for legally permissible injection purposes.

Most recently, in November 2020, Grant Township relied on the HRC in part to order PGE to stop hauling oil and gas well drilling equipment on Township roadways despite the existence of a valid highway permit to do so, they write. Grant Townships conduct in abrogating PGEs interest in environmental and UIC permits at the Yanity Well is deliberate, arbitrary, and irrational, exceeds the limits of governmental authority, amounts to an abuse of official power, and shocks the conscience.

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Read more from the original source:
PGE, township back in court over injection well in Indiana Co. - timesobserver.com

L. Lin Wood had a message from God to deliver.

Dont believe the media. Theyre liars, the celebrity defamation lawyer declared in October at a gathering of evangelicals in Atlanta.

Then he vowed, Were going to take them down, bringing the crowd to its feet.

Mr. Woods speech to a packed ballroom at the Faith and Freedom Coalitions annual conference was a preview of the role he would soon play as one of the most relentless promoters of President Trumps conspiracy theories and baseless claims about election fraud.

It is a turn that has surprised many former associates of the theatrical lawyer, whom Dan Rather once described as the attorney for the damned for his roster of high-profile clients like Richard A. Jewell, who was wrongly suspected of setting off a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics, and the parents of JonBenet Ramsey, the 6-year-old whose murder became a tabloid frenzy.

But Mr. Wood has reinvented himself into an extreme Trump advocate, one who has found fame among Mr. Trumps supporters not because he is good at notching victories for the president, but because he will amplify Mr. Trumps wildest accusations and dive head first into the culture wars.

Mr. Woods lawsuits seeking to undo the election in Georgia and to ask the Supreme Court to overturn votes in other key states have been soundly rejected by judges and riddled with errors, including a misspelling of his own name.

Still, many Republicans have grown worried that Mr. Wood is harming the partys chances of holding the Senate. His repeated suggestion that people should sit out the Georgia runoff elections to punish Republicans who werent sufficiently supportive of Mr. Trump led Newt Gingrich to condemn Mr. Wood as totally destructive. The editor of National Review described him as an exceptionally talented demagogue.

Ralph Reed, the chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a veteran of Georgia politics, said that control of the Senate was too important to squander.

I like Lin. I think hes a very brilliant guy and a first-class litigator, Mr. Reed said. But the stakes of the Senate races are too high to use them as a platform to express outrage about the results of the presidential election.

Former colleagues described Mr. Wood as someone who shares many traits with Mr. Trump. He claims to loathe the mainstream media but has used it effectively to build his brand. He intimidates adversaries with lawsuits. And he thrives on shocking those around him.

Mr. Woods recent clients have included highly polarizing figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who supports the QAnon hoax and was recently elected to Congress; Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who brandished weapons at demonstrators outside their house; and Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager charged with fatally shooting two protesters in Kenosha, Wis. He is also representing Nicholas Sandmann, a student whose encounter with a Native American protester made national news, in his libel suit against The New York Times.

Before the former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn raised the possibility with Mr. Trump of declaring martial law, the notion of enlisting the military to oversee a do-over of the election was an idea that Mr. Wood had floated in interviews with right-wing media.

Legal experts said Mr. Wood, who is well aware of what the law says about defamation and libel, appears to be betting that the targets of his most baseless claims wont sue him because he is protected by the First Amendment and they dont want the hassle. He has insinuated, for instance, that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. may have associated with the now-deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

And at a rally this month in Atlanta, where Mr. Wood appeared alongside Mr. Flynn and another pro-Trump lawyer known for pushing conspiracy theories, Sidney Powell, he accused Gov. Brian Kemp of corruption and led the crowd in chants of Lock him up!

His antics have earned him an audience with Mr. Trump. Mr. Wood said in an email that they had spoken about fraud and illegality in the election on more than one occasion, though he is not an official member of the presidents legal team.

Lawyers who have worked with Mr. Wood, 68, described him as animated and aggressive inside and outside the courtroom someone known for showing up uninvited to the news conferences of his opponents and belittling witnesses in depositions.

But few who know him professionally said they expected him to descend into the miasmic swamp of right-wing conspiracy theories.

The Lin Wood I see today bears basically no resemblance to the Lin Wood I knew back then, said Timothy Terrell, a law professor at Emory.

Timothy is not a friend of mine, Mr. Wood said. But I am pleased that Timothy has noticed a change in my life. God changed my life when I realized that He is real.

Mr. Woods biggest break came in 1996 when he represented Mr. Jewell, a security guard wrongly suspected of planting a pipe bomb in Atlanta during the Summer Olympics that killed one person and injured more than 100 others.

For the next 20 years, he built a reputation as a pit bull plaintiffs lawyer who sued the news media for a pantheon of aggrieved clients. He represented John and Patsy Ramsey in their struggle to clear their names in their daughters killing and the former congressman Gary Condit after the death of his intern Chandra Levy.

Though the defamation cases were headline-grabbing, his more lucrative legal work has been in areas like medical fraud and malpractice.

James Rawls, an Atlanta-based lawyer who helped Mr. Wood with some of the Ramsey family matters, said working with him was easy when we were all on the same team. But their relationship became untenable, Mr. Rawls said, because his firm, Powell Goldstein, had a large practice defending media companies and Mr. Wood was unwilling to stop attacking the media.

Mr. Wood was raised in Macon and experienced tragedy as a teenager, returning home one day to discover that his father an abusive alcoholic had beaten his mother to death. Watching the murder trial that followed inspired him to become a lawyer.

His professional life has been messy. His former law partners are suing him for unpaid compensation, alleging that he displayed bizarre, messianic behavior. They claim that he referred to himself as Almighty Lin and indicated that, according to a prophecy he saw on YouTube, he expected to be named chief justice of the United States.

I have assessed my mental health, he wrote in an email to his partners that is cited in the suit. I am a little crazy, but Im also mainly sane and possess a healthy mind.

Mr. Wood contends that the suit is littered with false statements and completely irrelevant factual allegations.

After his speech at the Faith and Freedom event, Mr. Wood returned to his seat on the dais and his date, the Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, jumped up to hug him.

Mr. Reed, the M.C., raised his voice to be heard over the applause.

Thank you for bringing the thunder, Lin, Mr. Reed said.

Go here to read the rest:
How Lin Wood Became a Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theorist - The New York Times