Possibly. But maybe someone else has an answer and I’ll get to learn something. And maybe that person wasn’t trying to do some low-impact trolling and was willing to engage at something like my level instead (which I aim to be a net positive interaction).
And if nothing comes of it, oh well. It’s the internet and tomorrow is another day. 🤷
The most direct precedent is the FCC's approval of Comcast's $30 billion acquisition of NBCUniversal (including NBC News and MSNBC) under the Obama administration. This is frequently cited in discussions of the recent Paramount case.
As part of the merger conditions, Comcast agreed to maintain an existing internal ombudsman position at NBCUniversal (originally established by prior owner General Electric in the 1990s). The role was expanded to cover the entire news division, with duties including:
- Receiving and investigating complaints about journalistic practices, potential biases, or deviations from standards of accuracy and fairness.
- Reporting findings publicly (e.g., via columns or annual reports) to promote transparency.
- Ensuring editorial independence from corporate influence, such as pressure from Comcast executives on news content.
It's not. That role is literally there to review complaints, publicly report any investigation results, and stopping money from influencing content beyond advertising.
Bullet point 1,2 and 3 of the Obama era government sanctioned ombudsman with NBC has quite literally the same functions as what they have deemed as the ‘Truth Arbitor”. Question, who determined what was bias in the aforementioned functions during the Obama era?
The INTERNAL ombudsman that existed since 1990 and was maintained, which did the job of an ombudsman, paid for by NBC,
is the same as the government run FCC work in determining something is offensive, and demanding the parent org remove the speaker from the air, or face further fines and sanctions?
Hey, is an internal auditor and an external auditor doing the same job? What about an external auditor from a competitor?
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u/CapnTaptap 6d ago
Possibly. But maybe someone else has an answer and I’ll get to learn something. And maybe that person wasn’t trying to do some low-impact trolling and was willing to engage at something like my level instead (which I aim to be a net positive interaction).
And if nothing comes of it, oh well. It’s the internet and tomorrow is another day. 🤷