Evening Broadcast News Shows Ignore Net Neutrality Ruling

Broadcast nightly news shows completely ignored the day’s landmark court ruling striking down federal net neutrality regulations, an omission that deals a huge disservice to the public audience and a boon to the news outlets’ parent corporations.

Net neutrality — the principle that corporate internet providers should provide equal access to content for subscribers — was dealt a serious blow the morning of January 14 when the D.C. Court of Appeals invalidated the Federal Communications Commission’s requirement that providers offer equal access to online information, regardless of the source. Prior to the ruling, the FCC prevented internet providers from blocking (or slowing down access to) content in order to benefit their own business interests.

That evening, neither NBC, CBS, nor ABC acknowledged the ruling in their evening news broadcasts.

Here’s why that’s important — NBC is owned by Comcast Corporation, which bills itself as the nation’s largest high-speed Internet provider. CBS’ parent company is CBS Corporation, which also owns multiple sports networks and Showtime, while ABC is part of The Walt Disney Company empire, also the owner of ESPN.

This is a huge conflict of interest for the broadcast news channels, as their parent corporations all have a vested interest in striking down net neutrality laws and promoting their own content at the expense of competitors that lack an advantage in size or Internet service. As PCWorld explained:

Net neutrality advocates fear that without rules in place, big companies like Netflix, Disney, and ESPN could gain advantage over competitors by paying ISPs to provide preferential treatment to their company’s data. For example, YouTube might pay extra so that its videos load faster than Hulu’s on the ISP’s network.

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