We preview the legal arguments for and against the Department of Justice's antitrust lawsuit against AT&T's proposed merger with Time Warner, Inc. We also examine the Spanish nickname drama that has overtaken Ted Cruz and Beto O'Rourke's Senate race; reflect on the five year anniversary of Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In" movement; and more.
Toys ‘R’ Us isn’t just a business. For many, it’s a place of childhood memories. What are yours?
It’s an end of an era for many consumers who grew up going to Toys “R” Us Inc. After operating for six decades, the toy store chain is planning to sell or close all its 800 stores.
Toys “R” Us has been unable to keep up with online competitors, some analysts say. The toy retailer was nearly $8 billion in debt when filed for bankruptcy six months ago. The liquidation of Toys “R” Us has sent the toy industry reeling, leaving preeminent manufacturers, like Mattel, without a large chain devoted to selling games and dolls and forcing them to scramble to secure other outlets to carry their items, according to the Wall Street Journal. The move will also affect as many as 33,000 jobs. The company told employees closures would likely happen over time and not all at once.
What is your memory of Toys “R” Us growing up? How do you feel about your children not having that experience? Call us at 866-893-5722.
With guest host Libby Denkmann.
Guest:
Abha Bhattarai, retail and business reporter for The Washington Post who covered the story; she tweets
AT&T/Time Warner vs. DOJ: preview of arguably the decade’s biggest antitrust case
The trial starts Monday in the case pitting AT&T’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner against the U.S. Department of Justice in what many are calling the biggest antitrust showdown since Microsoft in the 1990s and the so-called “browser wars.”
The case is similar to the Microsoft case in the sense that they were both antitrust issues, but it also has wide-reaching implications for how we consume video as the media landscape continues to wrestle with whether content distributors should also be suppliers.
It all started in October of 2016 when AT&T proposed it would purchase Time Warner, Inc., which owns HBO CNN, the various Turner networks like TBS and TNT, Cartoon Network, and Warner Brothers studios, for more than $85 billion. AT&T is the world’s biggest telecom company but makes very little content. Time Warner is one of the biggest content creators in the media space, it doesn’t have a distribution platform that gets content directly to customers like AT&T has with DirecTV.
Following months of review by federal antitrust regulations, the Department of Justice announced it would sue AT&T over the proposed merger, arguing that the country’s largest provider of pay-TV would have a chilling effect on competition, drive up rates for customers, and that its mere size and influence would allow it to push other entities around. AT&T says if it wins, prices should decrease for their services, not increase.
We’ll preview the legal arguments each side will make and the potential impact a decision either way could have on the media landscape.
With guest host Libby Denkmann.
Guests:
Meg James, corporate media reporter for The Los Angeles Times
Curt Hessler, lecturer in law at UCLA where he teaches antitrust and information law; he is the former chairman and CEO of 101 Communications
Will a Spanish nickname make the difference in the Cruz, O’Rourke Senate race in Texas?
Ted Cruz’s senate campaign is having a laugh over over Democratic opponent, Beto O’Rourke’s nickname.
O’Rourke goes by Beto, but his birth name is Robert Francis, and he’s of Irish descent. O’Rourke has been going by Beto since he was a kid. As reported by Vox, there’s even a picture of him with the nickname embroidered on a sweater. But Cruz is capitalizing on O’Rourke’s so-called name misrepresentation. Cruz even made a radio ad about it.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/MvKElqdUxZg
Cruz has also played the name game. He’s of Cuban descent and was born Rafael, not Ted. But it could be naive to think that a name could sway voters of any ethnicity one way or another in a state that typically votes Republican. So what role do names play in politics?
Guest host Libby Denkmann speaks to a Houston Chronicle reporter and a political science professor to find out what’s in a name, and do voters care?
With guest host Libby Denkmann.
Guests:
Kevin Diaz, Washington D.C. correspondent for the Houston Chronicle and Hearst newspapers
Louis Desipio, political science and Chicano/Latino studies professor, and director of the Center for Democracy at the UC Irvine
The future of the Veterans Administration, with VA Secretary David Shulkin’s job on the line
In a week that saw the ouster of Rex Tillerson from the State Department, rumor is now flying that another high-level official at the Trump administration’s job might be on the line.
David Shulkin, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, has been embroiled in a bubbling controversy involving a trip he took to Europe with his wife. And President Trump has allegedly told his aides that he might want to replace Shulkin as part of a deeper overhaul of his Cabinet, the Washington Post reports.
Joining AirTalk to discuss the story is Military Times’ congressional reporter, Leo Shane III.
With guest host Libby Denkmann.
Guest:
Leo Shane III, congressional reporter at the Military Times who’s been following the story. He tweets
YouTube wants to fight fake news by linking conspiracy videos to Wikipedia
In the aftermath of the Parkland, Florida school shooting last month, the number one video trending on YouTube was a conspiracy theory accusing a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student survivor appearing in interviews, to only be an actor.
The video reached 200,000 views before YouTube removed it from its site.
But YouTube’s community guidelines on uploading conspiracy theories and misinformation have been murky, along with how it determines which hoaxes to crack down on. This week, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki unexpectedly announced during a SXSW panel with WIRED editor-in-chief Nicholas Thompson that the platform now plans to debunk erroneous content by linking videos to "information cues," such as text-based Wikipedia.
While the video-sharing site has received praise for taking steps to fight fake news, critics say that Wikipedia, which is a battleground of information in and of itself, is just a band aid for the very algorithms that disseminate misinformation on YouTube. We speak with a WIRED reporter who has been following the story as well as a fake news media expert.
We reached out to Google’s Press Team and received this response from a YouTube spokesperson:
We’re always exploring new ways to battle misinformation on YouTube. At SXSW, we announced plans to show additional information cues, including a text box linking to third-party sources around widely accepted events, like the moon landing. These features will be rolling out in the coming months, but beyond that we don’t have any additional information to share at this time.
With guest host Libby Denkmann.
Guests:
Louise Matsakis, staff writer for WIRED covering cyber security, internet law and online culture; she has been following the story and tweets
S. Shyam Sundar, professor of media studies at Penn State and co-director of the university's Media Effects Research Laboratory; Sundar received a grant from the National Science Foundation in 2017 with colleague Dongwon Lee to create machines that can detect fake news
It’s been 5 years – whatever happened to Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’ movement?
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg launched a feminist movement in 2013 when she released “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.”
The book dove into the reasons why women were underrepresented in government and industry leadership positions and offered solutions to help them reach their full professional potential. Sandberg discussed work-life balance, mentorship, the wage gap and, most of all, the importance of “leaning in” to actively seek leadership roles at work.
Though a “Lean In” community still exists in “circles” – small groups that meet regularly to support each other in professional goals – the movement has largely faded from prominence and a new one has taken its place. #MeToo has shifted the conversation around female empowerment in the workplace from gaining representation in leadership roles to ensuring basic safety from sexual harassment and assault.
Five years after Sandberg told women to “Lean In,” AirTalk wants to hear from you. What did the book mean to you when it came out? Did you listen and “lean in”? What happened if you did? And do you feel like there has been any movement in your industry to increase the number of women in leadership?
With guest host Libby Denkmann.
Guests:
Lori Mackenzie, executive director of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, where she is co-founder of the Center for the Advancement of Women's Leadership
Christine Williams, professor of sociology at the University of Texas, Austin; she has written many books on gender in the workplace, including “Still a Man's World: Men Who Do Women's Work” (University of California Press, 1995)