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FCC Boss Tries to Hide His Latest Gift to Sinclair Broadcasting

The Federal Communications Commission on Friday quietly approved the transfer of seven major television station licenses owned by Bluestone Television/Bonten Media to Sinclair Broadcast Group -- without informing the agency's sole Democratic commissioner, Mignon Clyburn. Current FCC boss Ajit Pai spent a lot of time complaining about transparency at the FCC when he was a regular commissioner under former FCC boss Tom Wheeler. Yet much like his professed dedication to bridging the digital divide, this dedication to transparency appears to only be skin deep.

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Clyburn stated on Twitter that the FCC appears to have tried to bury the news of the approval ahead of the July 4 weekend, and didn't even inform her of the decision. She wound up learning about the decision from her own agency via news reports.

Pai has long opposed media ownership and consolidation limits, and unsurprisingly has made letting these companies grow immensely larger his top agency priority. That has involved attempts to restore the so-called UHF discount, which would let major media companies exceed previous restrictions on the number of stations that they can own.

The efforts have been consistently criticized as damaging to local media outlets and regional reporting. Comedian John Oliver took aim at Sinclair in a segment on his program, Last Week Tonight, but didn't really focus too much on how the current FCC is busy making this possible.

»youtu.be/GvtNyOzGogc

Most recommended from 22 comments



TIGERON
join:2008-03-11
Boston, MA

20 recommendations

TIGERON

Member

What do you expect?

Ajit Pai never met a merger / acquisition he did not like. $cumbag 101. We are screwed.

Anon5a60b
@chtrptr.net

4 recommendations

Anon5a60b

Anon

John Oliver talked about this on Sunday

apparently Sinclair is bunch of Fox news type that force their stations to show conservative point of view

»www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· kTonight