Many of the same civil rights groups that regularly advocate their support of giant corporate telecom mergers are back once again to show their support for the controversial T-Mobile/Sprint merger. But that support does not come for free.

A “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) that includes “philanthropy and community investment” that does not exclude direct financial contributions from the two wireless companies to these civil rights groups is a major part of a new “understanding” announced today between several organizations founded to represent minority interests and T-Mobile and Sprint that the wireless companies hope will deliver an imprimatur for the troubled merger deal with regulators and politicians.

The key items in the MOU:

1. Standing up a national diversity and inclusion council comprised of non-employees from diverse groups, including each of the multicultural leadership organizations that are party to the MOU, and other highly esteemed community leaders to facilitate open communication over the development, monitoring, and evaluation of diversity initiatives and to provide advice to the New T-Mobile senior executives.

2. With the help and input of the council, developing and implementing a Diversity Strategic Plan addressing each of the key elements of the MOU and reflecting best practices in the industry.

3. Increasing the diversity of its leadership and workforce at all levels including its Board governance, to reflect the diversity of the communities in which it operates.

4. Making a targeted effort to increase partnerships, business, and procurement activities with diverse business enterprises in a range of categories such as financial and banking services, advertising, legal services and asset sales. New T-Mobile aims to become a member of the Billion Dollar Roundtable by 2025.

5. Expanding wireless offerings to low-income citizens, underserved minority populations and insular and rural areas, and to organizations serving these underserved communities [including] a significant philanthropic investment for institutions serving disadvantaged or underrepresented communities to support tech entrepreneurship and to bridge the gap in literacy.

The groups, most familiar to Stop the Cap! readers that have followed civil rights groups engaged in pay for play advocacy, include:

• National Urban League: A notorious friend of big cable and phone companies, the Urban League is a regular supporter of telecom mergers and opposes net neutrality.
• The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC): Brazenly photographs its executive leadership accepting big checks from AT&T and other telecom companies.
• National Action Network: Rev. Al Sharpton’s group loves to support telecom mergers and acquisitions and lobbies to block consumer protection regulation.
• UnidosUS: Receives most of its funding from corporate interests.
• Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC
• OCA – Asian Pacific American Advocates: One of Comcast’s special friends, OCA advocated against new consumer privacy rules two years ago claiming poor people want more intrusive ads.

In a joint statement, the groups urged the FCC to approve the T-Mobile/Sprint merger “so the combined New T-Mobile can definitively launch these enhanced diversity efforts and expansion of service to all communities included in the MOU.”

“T-Mobile is honored to partner with these visionary organizations to create an action plan of this magnitude that includes commitments to diversity and inclusion that are bolder than ever before,” John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile and CEO of New T-Mobile, said in a statement. “With this MOU, we have doubled down on ensuring we represent the communities we serve today and will serve as the New T-Mobile in the future. We are excited for the New T-Mobile to become a reality so we can get to work on delivering these commitments.”

Except in most cases, these kinds of arrangements serve mostly as window dressing, gussying up otherwise nakedly anti-consumer merger deals under the guise of serving minority or disadvantaged interests. Money often quietly flows between the corporate and the non-profit side, usually in the form of donations. Some groups may also offer token advisory board positions to executives, which usually cements an ongoing advocacy relationship.

Members of these civil rights organizations have a right to be puzzled why such groups are spending significant time and resources engaged in corporate advocacy. The interests of two major corporations cementing a multi-billion dollar merger deal and civil rights groups trying to fight discrimination and improve the lives of their constituents are often tangential, if not in direct opposition to each other. Apparently the money that usually comes with these arrangements matters much more.

Bull Connor was Birmingham, Ala.’s notorious Commissioner of Public Safety in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

In an astonishing guest editorial published by USA TODAY, Rev. Jesse Jackson evoked imagery of the 1960s civil rights movement as a backdrop to claim the Federal Communication Commission’s plan to promote an open, competitive market for set-top boxes was racist.

“National news coverage of the snarling dogs, water hoses and church bombings in the American South were the catalysts to exposing the ugly truths of racism and bigotry in the 1960s. Local news outlets gave new meaning to what the struggle looked like for people on its front lines,” wrote Jackson. “That is why a new proposal at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate TV ‘set top boxes’ has raised so much concern.”

That “concern” has come almost entirely from the cable and telco-TV industry and their allies, which have compared the potential breakup of a lucrative cable TV equipment monopoly to anti-Americanism, minority television genocide, an invitation to piracy and a pathway for total world domination by Google.

In April, we reported the rhetoric surrounding the proposal, which would create an open standard allowing any manufacturer to make and sell their own set-top box, had already taken Hyperbole Hill. But Rev. Jackson’s latest guest editorial rockets the ridiculousness of the cable industry’s opposition into the stratosphere.

Jackson claims (wrongly) the proposal will lead third-party manufacturers to segregate minority television content, apparently in a way that resembles life in rural Mississippi in 1962. It evokes dreams of hordes of Google vans roaming across the southern countryside looking for trouble by stripping networks like Revolt and Vme TV of their ad revenue and copyright protection. It just isn’t true. But one line in Jackson’s commentary does prove revealing — noting all these terrible events could all take place “without any compensation.”

Jackson

This is the diamond in the rough of this near-senseless editorial. Like most things in the world of Big Telecom public policy, it’s all about the money. Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition apparently isn’t what it used to be. Originally created to promote civil rights and diversity, the organization these days is just as likely to promote Big Telecom mergers and its public policy agenda, usually in exchange for contributions to Jackson’s groups, although such quid-pro-quo is always hotly denied. Therefore, we shall call them monetary “coincidences.” His coincidental association with Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and others runs back more than a decade:

• Bell Atlantic (later Verizon) coincidentally donated $1 million to Jackson and his groups. In 1999, Jackson coincidentally endorsed the merger of GTE and Bell Atlantic into a new entity known as Verizon, which coincidentally pledged $300,000 to Jackson annually through the year 2002;
• In 1998 Jackson was strongly opposed to the merger of SBC and Ameritech (which would later emerge as AT&T), suggesting it was anti-democratic. After the two companies donated $500,000 to Jackson’s Citizenship Education Fund (given a dubious rating by Charity Navigator), Jackson coincidentally did a complete 180, praising the merger. It didn’t hurt that Ameritech coincidentally sold part of its cellular business to Georgetown Partners, owned coincidentally by one of Jackson’s closest friends.
• Not to be left out, AT&T coincidentally donated $425,000 to Jackson’s Citizenship Education Fund in 1999, right after Jackson coincidentally withdrew his opposition to the merger of AT&T and TCI Cable (later sold to Comcast).
• Jackson coincidentally has maintained a regular presence in proceedings involving Comcast’s various business dealings, particularly its merger with NBCUniversal, which it coincidentally endorsed as “pro-consumer.”

Jackson mentioned his views have the support of certain other civil rights organization including the National Urban League and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), two groups Stop the Cap! has written about extensively regarding their ongoing committed support of Big Telecom mergers, deregulation, and other public policy agendas. They don’t work for free — substantial contributions and other compensation from those same companies head into the coffers of both groups. LULAC counts AT&T, Comcast, Cox, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, Time Warner Cable and Verizon as members of their “corporate alliance.” None of those companies support the FCC’s plan to open up the set-top box marketplace.

Jackson cheapens the legacy of the civil rights movement in his efforts to draw comparisons between the horrible atrocities of the past with the fat equipment profits the cable industry is counting on in the future.

His views are also simply provably wrong. Jackson’s claim that the government was somehow responsible for the destruction of local multicultural newspapers at a time when the entire newspaper industry continues to struggle against online media is ludicrous. His myopic view that the elimination of a minority tax certificate program is the reason minorities don’t own many radio and television stations today ignores the fact many former minority owners cashed out and sold those stations (at a massive profit) after the Clinton Administration deregulated the industry in the late 1990s, which lead to a massive wave of ownership consolidation. Finding individuals, minority or otherwise, that still own local radio and television stations isn’t as easy as it once was.

Jackson and his supporters are wasting their time fighting to preserve the dying concept of the 500-channel linear TV marketplace. Consumers, minorities included, are not clamoring for more minority networks littering the cable dial that spend much of their broadcast day airing program length commercials and reruns of Good Times or The Cosby Show. Many of these networks only add to the growing cost of cable TV. Viewers want on-demand access to quality original programming they can actually find and watch.

We’d also remind Jackson minorities also pay the outrageous price of set-top box rentals, something Jackson and his organization should be sensitive about. Busting the set-top box monopoly means every American will pay lower rates for this equipment. We do understand it won’t help Jackson’s bank account, or those of other civil rights groups that kowtow to their corporate friends, but who exactly do they represent?

Daring to suggest that this debate has anything to do with Bull Connor’s outrageous behavior in Birmingham, Ala. in 1963, where Connor ordered the city fire department to turn fire hoses on peaceful civil rights protesters and attacked them with police dogs, tarnishes the reputation of Jackson and his group and demonstrates just how desperate the cable industry is getting trying to credibly defend a monopoly. Jackson should withdraw those remarks.

Martínez

Companies like to pretend that mergers are about more than consolidating power and increasing profits. To push massive mergers through, they make a whole host of promises and spend a whole lot of money spinning stories that makes it sound like their deals will be in the public interest — ­and in the best interests of marginalized communities.

But this is rarely, if ever, the case.

Broadband and cable providers in particular have tried to appeal to communities of color by promising to increase diversity in programming. These companies also vow to make broadband more affordable for low-income households.

The most recent example of this dynamic is Charter Communications.

Charter, which is trying to take over Time Warner Cable, just signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with several prominent civil rights groups. In the MOU, Charter pledges to, among other things, “expand programming targeting diverse audiences.”

On paper, such commitments may appear to benefit communities of color. But as a report from Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race shows, there’s good reason to be skeptical about whether Charter will follow through.

“The Latino Disconnect: The Impact of Media Mergers on Latino Consumers and Representation” found there was “no significant increase in diversity behind the camera after the 2011 Comcast-NBCUniversal merger, despite a pledge to increase Latino representation in programming.”

The study examines media mergers that have taken place since 2008 but takes a deeper look at the Comcast deal and focuses specifically on Latin@ representation. The research shows that while Latin@ representation went up slightly in front of the camera following the merger, representation actually declined behind the camera. And overall, “the agreements and promises made before the merger weren’t really panning out.”

And despite the pledges from companies like Charter to make broadband more affordable, a recent Pew study found that broadband adoption rates for Black and Latin@ households have dropped significantly over the past two years due to the high cost of broadband.

Unfortunately, the promises these companies make to civil rights organizations and the communities these groups represent are unenforceable. Meanwhile, communities of color would suffer most from the Charter merger, which would lead to higher prices for cable and broadband.

Many groups have come out against the takeover for this very reason. The National Hispanic Media Coalition recently filed testimony with the California Public Utilities Commission opposing the merger. NHMC President Alex Nogales noted that “a merger of this size and scope would grant an unacceptable concentration of power over the cost and quality of broadband connections and access to diverse programming … this merger would be a bad deal for Latinos and California.”

Meanwhile, Presente.org, the nation’s largest Latin@ online advocacy organization, also opposes the merger, stating it would hit the Latin@ community and other underserved populations hard with steeper prices and poorer service.

Companies like Charter and Comcast make promises around diversity to win support for their mergers because they know how important issues of access and representation are to communities of color. They also know there are no real ways for us to hold them accountable.

All communities of color deserve the opportunity to tell their own stories, find adequate representation on every channel and have access to affordable broadband services. But history has shown us that companies like Charter will exploit the marginalization of our communities to get what they want. And as the Columbia study has found, these merger-related promises often go unfulfilled.

Join Free Press in urging the FCC to stop the Charter-Time Warner Cable merger.

Lucia Martínez is an organizer for Free Press’ campaign initiatives.

Editor’s Note: In the Spanish language most (not all) nouns are assigned gender—masculine or feminine. To promote gender equality/gender neutrality, many prefer to use the term “Latin@,” which refers to both men (latino) and women (latina). (The “@” symbol encompasses both the “a” and the “o.”)

Phillip “Victory is Ours” Dampier

It has been 14 months since we heard for the first time Comcast was planning to acquire Time Warner Cable. It was the night of February 12, 2014. I still remember where I was the moment I first learned the news.

Stop the Cap! has maintained a civil relationship with Time Warner Cable for the most part over our seven-year struggle fighting usage caps, lousy broadband, and high prices. We fought one major battle with the company in April of 2009, when Time Warner executives planned a compulsory usage cap experiment on customers in Rochester, N.Y., Austin and San Antonio, Tex., and Greensboro, N.C.

Just as we had done with Frontier Communications a year earlier, we successfully beat down their efforts to impose usage allowances on customers already paying a significant chunk of money for broadband Internet access. After that battle ended, Time Warner Cable changed their position on usage caps and stated emphatically that customers should always have the option of unmetered/unlimited access. They have kept their word. In fact, their optional usage cap experiments have been a spectacular flop, attracting less than 1% of their customer base and delivering the message we’ve tried to get across the industry for years: customer hate usage caps, usage-based billing, and speed throttles.

Comcast is a company that long ago stopped listening to their customers. It applied an arbitrary usage cap on all their customers in retaliation for a FCC decision that disallowed them from running hidden speed throttles on peer-to-peer Internet traffic. Comcast lied about throttling traffic, paid homeless people to stack a hearing on the issue to keep company critics out of the room, and slapped the caps on in the fall of 2008 with the flimsy excuse it represented “fairness” to customers. Only later, we would learn usage caps were never about “fairness” or good traffic management. It’s just a way to deter customers from spending too much time on the Internet, especially if that time is spent watching online videos. Too much time spent watching Netflix might convince you your cable TV package isn’t necessary any longer.

Comcast customer service horror stories reached a level unparalleled by other cable companies when a Comcast predator-installer was convicted of raping and strangling to death 23-year old Comcast customer Urszula Sakowska,  whose lifeless body was found in a bathtub inside her Chicago-area home back in 2006. But Triplett’s violent service calls didn’t stop there. He also faced charges in the death of 39-year old Janice Ordidge, a Comcast customer in Hyde Park. Those two Comcast customers lost their lives. In 2009, another Comcast installer set a Pennsylvania customer’s house on fire. Other installers stole jewelry right out of customers’ homes. Others have exposed themselves in front of female customers or fallen asleep on their couches.

Billing errors are the stuff of legend at Comcast. Offshore call centers with language barriers, inept customer service, and long, long, long lines at cable stores with windows only partially manned by agents sitting behind bullet-proof glass also helped cultivate a customer relationship that can best be described as “perp and victim.”

Comcast isn’t just a bad cable company, it’s a menace. We didn’t have to spend hours proving our case. Fortunately, Comcast’s appalling reputation preceded it. Outside of two executive suites in Philadelphia and New York, nobody was for supersizing Comcast. Just to make sure our regulators knew this, we traveled to Buffalo in June of last year to testify at a Public Service Commission hearing on the subject of the merger. We didn’t mince words.

Sure, there were non-profit groups like the Boys & Girls Club that absolutely sullied their reputation pushing for the merger (Comcast wrote large checks to the organization so you need not give the group a single penny of your money in the future). “Civil Rights” organizations like the Urban League, NAACP, and others that used to defend minority rights now concern themselves with defending the interests of giant cable companies, just as long as they get a nice check in the mail with Comcast’s name on it. Among the worst of all – Shakedown Al Sharpton who will either be your merger deal’s best friend or will go away and leave victims of racism in peace, if you cut his organization a big fat check. (Now that the merger has collapsed, perhaps Comcast-owned MSNBC will end the thinly veiled quid-pro-quo arrangement it has with the man that gives him an hour a night to perform a talent train wreck.)

My own state assemblyman, Joe Morelle, who served as New York’s interim assembly speaker for about five minutes literally plagiarized his letter in support of the Comcast merger (after cashing their check) almost word-for-word from Comcast press releases and congressional testimony. Say it ain’t so, Joe!

N.Y. State Assembly Leader Joe Morelle: “The combination of Comcast and Time Warner Cable will create a world-class communications, media and technology company to help meet the increasing consumer demand for advanced digital services on multiple devices in homes, workplaces and on-the-go.”

David Cohen, executive vice-president, Comcast: “The combination of Comcast and TWC will create a world-class communications, media, and technology company to help meet the insatiable consumer demand for advanced digital services on multiple devices in homes, workplaces, and on-the-go.”

There was not a doubt in my mind that replacing Time Warner Cable with Comcast would be a disaster for Time Warner Cable customers. Despite promises Comcast would upgrade Time Warner’s network, it would also upgrade customer bills, resorting in higher priced service, higher modem fees, and lousy customer service. Comcast vice president David Cohen also made it clear usage caps would be a part of our life within five years. No amount of protesting or rational argument would stop Comcast from being Comcast. Don’t like it? Just try to cancel.

Time Warner Cable can be bad but it is no Comcast.

Malone: Waiting in the wings?

Life will be just fine without Comcast, but danger lurks on the horizon. Still interested in the possibility of taking over Time Warner Cable is the smaller Charter Communications, now effectively controlled by cable magnate John Malone (he owns his own castles). Malone has a long history of enriching himself at the expense of customers with no other choices for cable/broadband service. He used to control Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI), a cable company that literally threatened city officials who didn’t do what TCI wanted.

We remain unsure exactly what will happen next. Charter could bid aggressively to buy Time Warner Cable, Time Warner Cable could go it alone, or Time Warner Cable could start buying other cable companies (like Charter).

What we hope will happen is Time Warner Cable will refocus its energy on expanding its Maxx upgrade program as quickly as possible to reach all Time Warner Cable markets with faster broadband and a better cable TV experience. We also hope the company will stand by its word that compulsory usage caps are off the table.

I’d like to thank all of our readers who took the time to get involved in the fight and helped make a difference. Wall Street and Washington, as well as Comcast CEO Brian Roberts are all shocked the merger deal collapsed after a torrent of criticism from consumers. It also left state regulators cautious about how to proceed. New York’s Public Service Commission delayed making a decision eight times, recognizing the merger as a hot potato.

Our experience demonstrates that ordinary citizens can wield considerable power when unified and involved. We’ve proved that with multiple victories on the usage cap front as well as the AT&T/T-Mobile merger and Net Neutrality.

Let the fight for better broadband continue!

Allen: Comcast thinks “Give Sharpton $50,000 and a bucket of chicken and we’re good.”

A $20 billion racial discrimination lawsuit filed on behalf of black-owned media companies has uncovered alleged ties between executives of Comcast and Time Warner Cable and public officials who have allegedly helped cover up cable industry discrimination, price-fixing, collusion, and illegal payoffs.

Byron Allen, chairman and CEO of Entertainment Studios, in a blitz of eyebrow-raising interviews, accuses the two cable giants of putting minority-owned channels in the back of the bus, while falsely claiming black celebrities are the owners of minority networks that are actually controlled by former Comcast executives and private equity firms.

“Comcast has, in essence, created a ‘Jim Crow’ process with respect to licensing channels from 100 percent African American–owned media,” the suit reads, according to The Huffington Post. “Comcast has reserved a few spaces for 100 percent African American–owned media in the ‘back of the bus’ while the rest of the bus is occupied by white-owned media companies.”

The lawsuit, filed against Time Warner Cable, Comcast, the Urban League, the NAACP, former FCC commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, and Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, claims the defendants are taking payoffs from the two cable giants and colluding to promote their business agendas and give minority support to their mergers and acquisitions.

“The industry spends about $50 billion a year licensing cable networks in which 100 percent African American-owned media receives less than $3 million per year in revenue from that $50 billion stream of money that is spent to acquire content,” he said.

Under normal circumstances, many African-American civil rights organizations would immediately raise a ruckus over the imbalance, but Allen alleges Comcast and Time Warner Cable have bought their silence, and in the case of Al Sharpton, his loyalty and support.

Byron Allen accuses Comcast of locking out 100% black-owned networks.

“Instead of spending real money with real, 100 percent African American-owned media, it is easier to give [Sharpton] $50,000 to give them a cover,” he said. “‘Give [Sharpton] $50,000 and a bucket of chicken and we’re good.'”

Allen called Sharpton the “least expensive negro” Comcast could find, and rewarded his loyalty with a $750,000 annual salary hosting a barely watched nightly show on Comcast-owned MSNBC.

“Why is Sharpton on TV every night on MSNBC? Because he endorsed Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal,” Allen said. “He signed the memorandum of understanding back in 2010. He endorsed the merger. Next thing you know we’re watching him on television trying to form a sentence. Every night we have the privilege of watching adult illiteracy.”

Attwell-Baker is a defendant for her highly visible warp speed trip through D.C.’s revolving door, as the former Republican FCC commissioner seemed to be writing her resignation letter seconds after voting in favor of the Comcast-NBCUniversal merger, quickly accepting a high paid lobbying job with the cable company.

“President Obama promised us transparency, hope, and change,” he said. “And what happened in the Obama administration is former commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker voted for the merger of Comcast NBCU and then 90 days later took a much higher paying job with Comcast after granting them the merger. That was betraying the public’s trust as a public service.”

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/HuffPost Byron Allen 2-27-15.mp4[/flv]

Watch the HuffPost Live interview with Byron Allen, who reveals who really owns the minority channels Comcast brags about. (7:37)

“President Obama has been bought and paid for. He has taken donations from Comcast. Comcast is his biggest contributor,” he added. “AT&T is one of his biggest contributors. Listen, Obama, your own FTC is investigating AT&T for throttling. How can you even consider them to buy DirectTV when you’re suing them? Is it because you took donations? Yes, Obama. Don’t even think about letting them merge until they settle this lawsuit and that lawsuit.”

Sharpton, in addition to being a regular supporter of Comcast’s various business agendas, also hosts a nightly show on Comcast-owned MSNBC, for which he is paid $750,000 a year.

“AT&T spent more money on Al Sharpton’s birthday party than they have on 100 percent African-American owned media combined,” Allen said. “He (Sharpton) should return the money because AT&T doesn’t even celebrate Martin Luther King Day as a national holiday. The employees there take it as a sick day.”

Apart from Allen’s inflammatory appearances on cable news, his lawsuit does bring to light several important new facts about Comcast’s claims it supports minority-owned channels. Allen’s lawsuit alleges many of those channels are actually secretly owned and controlled by former Comcast executives, private equity firms, and Wall Street banks.

• “Aspire is controlled by Leo Hindery and Leo Hindery is not black. They don’t pay Aspire any subscription fees. Aspire is free,” said Allen.
• “Sean ‘P Diddy’ Combs’ network Revolt TV is controlled by a private equity firm called Highbridge Capital. The person who runs Highbridge Capital is a former Comcast executive named Payne Brown. Highbridge Capital is owned by JP Morgan. On the board of JP Morgan is Steve Burke, the number two executive at Comcast,” said Allen.

These revelations are important because Comcast promised to create and carry minority-owned channels as part of several conditions mandated by regulators to approve the 2011 acquisition of NBCUniversal. Allen claims Comcast has broken its commitment and instead created “token front” networks or minority network “window dressing” that feature well-known African-American celebrities that pose as owners of the networks, but in fact they are controlled by white-owned businesses.

The lawsuit claims Comcast carries only one 100% African-American owned and controlled network — the Africa Channel. But dig a little deeper and you find the network is owned by a former Comcast/NBCU executive that played a critical part organizing minority group support for the NBCUniversal buyout.

Comcast and Sharpton’s organization both dismissed the lawsuit as inflammatory and frivolous.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNN Sharpton called black pawn in white game 3-1-15.flv[/flv]

Byron Allen appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources and called Sharpton “a black pawn in a very sophisticated white economic chess game. He’s being used by his white masters at Comcast and AT&T. He just needs to shut up and get in the bleachers.” (7:12)