The Federal Communications Commission voted this month to repeal its 39% cap limiting how much of the national television market a single owner can legally own. In doing so, the FCC has supercharged an ongoing debate over media consolidation and monopolies.

Moving forward, station purchases will be adjudicated with a “granular case-by-case review,” said the FCC in a press release. But concerns over increased monopolization and questions about the commission's authority in this case have some critics crying foul and predicting a rocky legal road for FCC Chair Brendan Carr.

‘Shift from local to national’
The FCC claims that its 39% ownership cap had “become outdated” and “hindered broadcasters’ ability to compete for viewers and advertising dollars” against digital services that “face no comparable restrictions,” said The Wall Street Journal. Removing the cap will “foster a competitive media market, enhance localism and promote investment in trusted sources,” said the commission in its release.

But the change is a “big win” for media companies “aligned with President Donald Trump and the Republican Party,” said CNN. If allowed to stand, removing the cap means big station group owners will be able to “buy up more TV stations, furthering a shift from local to national ownership.”

Carr’s “rationale” for the change is to “balance the power between local broadcasters and networks,” said Anna Gomez, the FCC's lone Democrat and sole “no” vote on removing the rule cap, per NPR. In practice, the commission is “putting its thumb on the scale.”

‘Serious concerns’ 
The new rule is “already facing legal challenges,” with experts warning of a “real chance the agency loses in court,” said Axios. Some observers, including an array of conservative lawmakers, are skeptical of the FCC’s legal ability to make the changes in the first place.

The cap was enacted by Congress to “protect localism, viewpoint diversity and consumer choice,” said Hunter Wilson, the spokesperson for the lobbying group American Television Alliance, to Variety. The FCC has “ignored Congressional intent” and “opened the door to unchecked ‘Big Broadcast’ consolidation that will drive up costs for viewers and reduce local news programming.”

Nearly 30 years after the fatal shooting of rapper Tupac Shakur, Duane “Keffe D” Davis is standing trial for one of the U.S.’s most notorious unsolved murders. At the core of the case is Davis’ self-published memoir in which he claims to be “one of the only living eyewitnesses” to the rapper’s killing. It means, rather unusually, “he’s the defendant, but he’s also the all-star witness,” said legal analyst Joey Jackson on CNN.

What’s in the book?
Published in 2019, “Compton Street Legend” opens in Las Vegas on the night of 7 Sept. 7, 1996, with a step-by-step account of a plan to confront Shakur and Death Row Records CEO Marion “Suge” Knight in retaliation for an earlier fight. Davis describes how he secured a gun, jumped into a Cadillac with three others and drove around before spotting the pair at a junction. 

“No words exchanged, the time for talking had passed, the shit was about to go down!” he said in the book. Shakur was hit multiple times in the shooting that followed and died from his wounds six days later.

At first, the book “drew little attention outside online circles devoted to hip-hop lore and true crime,” said Julia Jacobs at The New York Times. But a detective with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department quietly began to build a case around it, and in 2023, excerpts from it convinced a grand jury to indict Davis on one count of murder, which Davis denies.

How will it be used at trial?
The prosecution’s case is “largely built on the defendant’s own words” from his book, podcast and documentary interviews, and statements made to police, said Eric Levenson on CNN. Davis is accused of orchestrating the killing, without actually being the one who pulled the trigger. 

The passages in the book, prosecutors argue, are a confession that he made public in the mistaken belief he had immunity. Davis has pleaded not guilty and claims that his prior statements about the night in question were false and merely an attempt to sell books.

All this means the jury will face an “unusual dynamic,” said Levenson. Prosecutors will “argue the accused murderer is credible and trustworthy, while defense attorneys will deride their client as a liar and fraud.” 

Farmers arrange bunches of pink water lilies in their boats in Barishal, Bangladesh. The flowers bloom across more than 10,000 acres of the region’s wetlands during monsoon season, when they are handpicked, tied into bundles and sold at local markets.
Joy Saha / Alamy Live News

Whether the ’80s were “morning in America” or the beginning of the end for the postwar political consensus, there’s no question that the decade produced its share of landmark cinematic achievements and seat-filling blockbusters. These memorable films include huge box office hits and gems known mostly to dedicated cinephiles.

‘Blade Runner’ (1982)
Harrison Ford plays Rick Deckard, one of the titular agents who hunt and retire rogue synthetic “replicants” in a bleak, polluted future Los Angeles. This “visionary” film presents the “future as a black market, made up of scrambled sordid aspects of the past,” said Pauline Kael at The New Yorker. And its unforgettable visual canvas gives it its “place in film history.” (YouTube)

‘Full Metal Jacket’ (1987)
Hollywood’s belated reckoning with the disastrous Vietnam War reached its apotheosis in the late 1980s. The first half of this “astonishingly assured piece of film-making” depicts the “steady dehumanization of Marine recruits,” while the second half builds to a “mini-inferno of sniper fire and gushing bullet wounds” that’s “hard to live through but impossible to forget,” said John Patterson at The Guardian. (Prime Video)

‘When Harry Met Sally’ (1989)
The standard against which all modern romantic comedies are measured, director Rob Reiner’s “When Harry Met Sally” is more than the sum of its well-known vignettes (fake orgasm in a deli, anyone?). A movie that treasures its “characters, atmosphere and setting,” it is also a “collection of finely hewn set pieces, nearly all of which pivot around nothing more than a conversation,” said Sonia Saraiya at Vanity Fair. (Prime Video)