Newsmax CEO Ruddy Tells Pai of Concerns on Comcast, Sinclair/Tribune, Seeks to Prevent ISP Blocking
Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy, meeting with more FCC officials about fears on Sinclair/Tribune (see 1709290063), also raised concern about Comcast's programming carriage choices and asked the agency not to let ISPs block or throttle content providers including news outlets. Meeting…
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last week with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, the head of the conservative news outlet said of efforts to reclassify broadband back under Title I of the Communications Act that "network neutrality protections have been in place long before the Obama Administration reclassified broadband under Title II and have been affirmed by both Republican and Democrat Administrations." Newsmax said in a filing posted Monday in docket 17-179 that "even if" ISPs hadn't "engaged in anti-competitive activity," the agency is obliged "to take reasonable steps to implement safeguards." On "Comcast’s well-known political bias," Ruddy said the company acts "not only [to] benefit their owned and operated networks like MSNBC and CNBC, but prevent networks that do not share their political point of view" from carriage. The cable operator has at least 11 liberal-leaning news and information channels and "only one conservative-leaning news channel, Fox News," Newsmax said. On Sinclair's planned takeover of Tribune, "Ruddy questioned the apparent rush to approve the Sinclair merger before the ownership cap had been fully reviewed by the Commission or Congress." Comcast and Sinclair didn't comment.