SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
federal communications commission
Charter-Cox $34.5 Billion Megamerger the 'Last Thing' Consumers Need: Watchdog
"However troubling as this merger might be for competition, at least as troubling is what the companies might agree to in order to persuade the Trump administration and the current FCC to approve the deal."
May 16, 2025
Charter Communications and Cox Communications on Friday announced a $34.5 billion merger that—if approved by the Trump administration—would create the largest cable television and broadband provider by subscribers in the United States, sparking a flurry of monopoly concerns.
Charter, which uses the branding Spectrum, is already the second-largest publicly traded cable company, but coupling with the privately held Cox would push it ahead of the current industry leader, Comcast. According to a statement from the cable giants, the combined company would be known as Cox Communications, with Spectrum as the consumer-facing brand.
"The last thing American consumers need is yet another megamerger, as giant internet service providers and cable companies claim they need to get yet-larger to keep up with their industry peers," said John Bergmayer, legal director at the watchdog Public Knowledge, in a Friday statement.
"More consolidation won't fix the cable industry, and introducing new sets of competitive problems is no way to address existing ones," he continued. "As always with cable mergers, the question is as much a loss of opportunities for content creators and programmers to reach an audience, as the loss of choices to subscribers."
As NBC News—whose parent company is Comcast—reported:
On a Friday call with investors, Charter CEO Chris Winfrey called the deal "good for America" and said it will "return jobs from overseas and create new, good-paying customer service and sales careers."
The commentary comes as corporate deal activity has been slower than expected since President Donald Trump took office.
After Trump won the election, Wall Street rallied as many expected the regulatory environment to loosen and the floodgates to open for dealmakers and corporate leaders. But in the months following the election, companies have been contending with other factors rather than dealmaking, such as the Federal Communications Commission's investigation into diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, and the outcome of Trump's tariffs.
The Charter-Cox deal could face scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission, led by Trump appointee Brendan Carr. Journalist George Chidi said on social media that "in a sane world, the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division and the FCC would block the merger of Cox Communications and Charter."
"Do I need to even complete this thought?" Chidi asked. "For the next three years and six months—assuming we are still having actual elections, it's corporate Christmas."
Public Knowledge's Bergmayer said that "however troubling as this merger might be for competition, at least as troubling is what the companies might agree to in order to persuade the Trump administration and the current FCC to approve the deal."
Trump has a long record of forcefully going after his critics, and experts—including Daniel Stockemer, a professor at Canada's University of Ottawa, in a commentary published earlier this month in the journal Politics & Policy—have warned that with his second term, the president is pushing the United States toward autocracy.
"Will the companies drop cable channels critical of this administration, or agree to censor online content or sites that the administration disapproves of—something the loss of Title II and net neutrality makes all the more likely?" Bergmayer wondered. "Given FCC Chairman Carr's proven willingness to use the agency's power to 'further the president's agenda,' and the willingness of companies to agree to get deals done, what could once be dismissed as paranoid speculation becomes frighteningly plausible."
"From walking back—even reversing—company policies designed to promote diversity and inclusion, to pulling back on news coverage critical of the administration, far too many companies have already put the short-term interest of currying favor with the White House over the public interest, and over the interests of their employees and the communities they serve," he added. "Hopefully that does not happen here."
Emarketer analyst Ross Benes toldReuters that "antitrust concerns are legitimate. But in this era of deregulation, the merger would probably pass as long as they don't upset the president."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Reporters Without Borders Sounds Alarm Over Trump Effort to 'Bring the Press Into Line'
RSF says Trump's moves "have jeopardized the country's news outlets and indicate that he intends to follow through on his threats, setting up a potential crisis for American journalism."
May 02, 2025
Press freedom in the United States has fallen to its lowest level since Reporters Without Borders began publishing its annual ranking more than 20 years ago, with President Donald Trump's return to power "greatly exacerbating the situation," RSF said Friday.
The U.S. fell from 55th to 57th place on RSF's World Press Freedom Index, marking the second straight year that the situation in the country which lists freedom of the press first in its Bill of Rights has been classified as "problematic." The report comes ahead of World Press Freedom Day on May 3.
The U.S. has been trending downward on RSF's index since 2013, when it ranked 32nd in global press freedom. A decade later, it had fallen to 45th place before plunging to 55th place last year amid Trump's attacks on the media.
"Trump was elected to a second term after a campaign in which he denigrated the press on a daily basis and made explicit threats to weaponize the federal government against the media," the report states.
Press freedom in the United States has hit a record low, according to the latest World Press Freedom Index published annually by Reporters Without Borders.
[image or embed]
— Axios (@axios.com) May 1, 2025 at 9:03 PM
"His early moves in his second mandate to politicize the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), banThe Associated Press from the White House, or dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media, for example, have jeopardized the country's news outlets and indicate that he intends to follow through on his threats, setting up a potential crisis for American journalism," the publication continues, accusing Trump of using "false economic pretexts" to "bring the press into line."
"The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides broad protections for the press. However, no meaningful press freedom legislation has been passed at the national level in recent years despite the country's consistent slide on the Press Freedom Index," the report notes. "The PRESS Act, a federal shield law, failed to pass for a second successive time in 2024. More than a dozen states and communities have proposed or enacted laws to limit journalists' access to public spaces, including barring them from legislative meetings and preventing them from recording the police."
RSF continued:
Economic constraints have a considerable impact on journalists. Roughly one-third of the American newspapers operating in 2005 have now shuttered. While some public media outlets, and radio stations in particular, have been able to offset this decline thanks to online subscription models, others have found ways to sustain growth through individual donations. Massive waves of layoffs swept the U.S. media throughout 2023 and 2024 and have continued into 2025, affecting both local newsrooms and major legacy outlets. Many parts of the country are now considered news deserts, with the disappearance of local news outlets reaching crisis levels. Since 2022, more than 8,000 journalists have been laid off in the U.S.
Furthermore, "more Americans have no trust in the media than trust it a fair amount. Online harassment, particularly towards women and minorities, is also a serious issue for journalists and can impact their quality of life and safety."
"Politicians' open disdain for the media has trickled down to the public," RSF added. "Journalists reporting on the ground can face harassment, intimidation, and assault while working. When covering demonstrations, journalists are sometimes attacked and physically assaulted by protestors or wrongfully arrested by police. According to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, there were 49 journalist arrests in 2024 compared to only 15 in 2023. The last journalist to be killed in the course of his work was Dylan Lyons in February of 2023."
RSF paints a grim picture for journalism around the world.
"The conditions for practicing journalism are bad in half of the world's countries," as "less than 1% of the world's population lives in a country where press freedom is fully guaranteed," the report states.
Noting that economic self-sufficiency is critical to a free press, RSF editorial director Anne Bocandé said in a statement that "guaranteeing freedom, independence,s and plurality in today's media landscape requires stable and transparent financial conditions."
"Without economic independence, there can be no free press," Bocandé continued. "When news media are financially strained, they are drawn into a race to attract audiences at the expense of quality reporting, and can fall prey to the oligarchs and public authorities who seek to exploit them. When journalists are impoverished, they no longer have the means to resist the enemies of the press—those who champion disinformation and propaganda."
"The media economy must urgently be restored to a state that is conducive to journalism and ensures the production of reliable information, which is inherently costly," she added. "Solutions exist and must be deployed on a large scale. The media's financial independence is a necessary condition for ensuring free, trustworthy information that serves the public interest."
RSF's new rankings come days after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi ended a Biden administration policy that strictly limited the Justice Department's authority to seize journalists' records and compel them to testify in leak investigations.
On Wednesday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) published a report on Trump's first 100 days in office, which the group said were "marked by a flurry of executive actions that have created a chilling effect and have the potential to curtail media freedoms."
"It is disturbing that, on the eve of #WorldPressFreedomDay, the Trump administration has dealt major blows to journalists and the public they serve." — Katherine Jacobsen, CPJ's U.S., Canada, and Caribbean program coordinator
[image or embed]
— Committee to Protect Journalists (@pressfreedom.bsky.social) May 2, 2025 at 9:09 AM
"From denying access to upending respect for the independence of a free press to vilifying news organizations to threatening reprisals, this administration has begun to exert its power to punish or reward based on coverage," CPJ said. "Whether in the states or on the streets, this behavior is setting a new standard for how the public can treat journalists."
"The uncertainty and fear resulting from these actions have caused requests for safety advice to increase as journalists and newsrooms aim to prepare for what might be next," the group added. "These moves represent a notable escalation from the first Trump administration, which also pursued banning and deriding elements of the press. After nearly a decade of repeating insults and falsehoods, and filing lawsuits, Trump has normalized disdain for media to an alarming degree."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Alito and Thomas Urged to Recuse From Key Case Over 'Cozy Ties' to Right-Wing Kingpin
"Americans deserve a legal system that isn't influenced by billionaires and special interest backers pushing an agenda at the expense of working families," said a watchdog group leader.
Mar 19, 2025
Ahead of U.S. Supreme Court arguments next week, a watchdog group asserted Wednesday that right-wing Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas must recuse themselves from a case "whose outcome could have sweeping consequences," citing "significant conflicts of interest" due to their relationships with "conservative kingpin Leonard Leo."
In Federal Communications Commissionv. Consumers' Research, a right-wing group is challenging the constitutionality of the FCC's Universal Service Fund program.
Vox's Ian Millhiser reported Wednesday that "if the Supreme Court accepts an argument raised by a federal appeals court, which struck down the federal program, it would bring about one of the biggest judicial power grabs in American history, and hobble the government's ability to do, well, pretty much anything."
In the new report about Alito and Thomas, the watchdog Accountable.US issued a similar warning about the case's potential impacts: "Effectively defunct for almost a century, the nondelegation doctrine prohibits Congress from passing off its legislative power to federal agencies... Reviving the doctrine would cripple agencies' ability to govern consumer safeguards, social security, Medicare, and more during a time when the Trump administration has begun to slash federal agencies."
"Now before the high court, the case presents an obvious conflict of interest for many of the justices who are personally tied to (and in some cases, friends of) the conservative activist Leonard Leo, who is closely connected to Consumers' Research," the analysis explains, pointing to reporting that Leo is the group's "main backer."
While "all six conservatives now sitting on the Supreme Court can credit Leo with helping to shepherd their confirmations," the watchdog's report states, the right-wing legal activist is "close personal friends" with Alito and Thomas.
According to the report:
- Leo has known Justice Thomas since the early 1990s when Leo was clerking in D.C. Since then, Leo has traveled with Thomas and invited him to his personal residence in Maine. The justice is also the godfather to one of Leo's daughters. Justice Thomas' wife, Ginni, has previously called Leo her "hero" and "mentor." Over the past 15 years, Leo and Ginni have worked together on several projects, operationalizing the outside game of conservative dark money and politics.
- Leo has also traveled with Justice Alito, most notably to Alaska on a private fishing trip (which Justice Alito did not disclose at the time). Leo's Federalist Society has also sponsored numerous trips overseas for Alito, some of them attended by Leo himself.
"Americans deserve a legal system that isn't influenced by billionaires and special interest backers pushing an agenda at the expense of working families. Justices Thomas and Alito's cozy ties to Leonard Leo and thereby Consumers' Research fly straight in the face of that, and present a clear conflict of interest impeding their ability to rule impartially on the case," said Accountable.US president Caroline Ciccone in a statement.
"Public trust in the Supreme Court is already at an all-time low because of misguided conduct by justices–this case threatens to degrade it further," Ciccone continued. "The Supreme Court simply cannot be trusted to defend the Constitution if it doesn't adopt an obligatory, enforceable code of conduct that cleans up the impropriety that's existed on the court for years. Thomas and Alito must recuse themselves and restore a semblance of integrity to the highest court."
In addition to releasing the report, Accountable.US and two other groups, Take Back the Court and United for Democracy, argued for Alito and Thomas' recusal in a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts—who on Tuesday publicly condemned right-wing attacks on the federal judiciary.
"The Supreme Court has been engulfed by corruption scandals, many of which centering around the right-wing justices' overly friendly relationships with powerful billionaires and special interests," United for Democracy senior adviser Meagan Hatcher-Mays said Wednesday. "At the same time that Justices Thomas and Alito were accepting lavish gifts and trips from billionaires, they were hearing cases with those same billionaires' legal interests at stake."
"It's impossible for the American public to trust in Supreme Court rulings when this kind of glad-handing is taking place," she added. "The appearance of impropriety is clear in FCC v. Consumers' Research given Leonard Leo's long-time friendship with Justices Thomas and Alito and his financial entanglements with Consumers’ Research. Justices Thomas and Alito must recuse themselves immediately."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular