Mediagazer: Comcast Sees Time Warner Cable Deal Boosting Broadband Competition (Gautham Nagesh/Wall Street Journal)

9:30 PM ET, February 21, 2014

Top News:

CNN:

Venezuela tells CNN journalists to ‘get out’ — Sorting fact from fiction in Venezuela — (CNN) — Venezuela has revoked or denied press credentials for CNN journalists in the country, following the president's announcement he would expel CNN if it did not “rectify” its coverage of anti-government protests.

Discussion: @tv6tnt and Business Insider

Natalie Kitroeff / The Lede:
Venezuela Battles Media, Social and Otherwise, to Restrict Protest Coverage

Discussion: New York Times, The Verge and Feministing

Hadas Gold / Politico:
Venezuela revokes CNN press credentials

Discussion: Poynter, Columbia Journalism Review, @maitwiter, @nickkristof, @cnnee, @hadas_gold, Mediaite and BBC

Frank Bajak / Associated Press:
Activists say Venezuela is blocking walkie-talkie app Zello and websites Pastebin and NTN24

Discussion: @wexler and @nancypelosi

Gautham Nagesh / Wall Street Journal:

Comcast Sees Time Warner Cable Deal Boosting Broadband Competition — Executive Says Deal Wouldn't Harm Home Users or Content Companies — A Comcast executive said Friday the company's planned $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable would create new competition in the commercial market …

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Charter CEO Rutledge: After Losing Time Warner Cable, We're Still Interested in Acquiring Subscribers

Discussion: USA Today, MediaPost, Reuters, Bloomberg, Business Insider, multichannel.com/rss and Hollywood Reporter

Eric Lipton / New York Times:
Comcast's Web of Lobbying and Philanthropy

Discussion: @nickjrusso, @nickconfessore, @amychozick, @tackettdc and @brianstelter

Jim Romenesko:

Report: Baltimore City Paper staffers will lose their jobs, but could be rehired by the Sun — Fern Shen reports Baltimore City Paper staffers met Thursday afternoon with their new boss at the Sun and were told that everyone loses their jobs, but could be rehired.

Discussion: Baltimore Brew, bizjournals, @camilledodero, @maura, @carr2n and The Huffington Post

Tom Scocca / Gawker:

Baltimore Is One Step Closer to Being a Zero-Newspaper Town — It's not even possible to get mad at the Baltimore Sun now. The Baltimore Sun is a nursing home where newspapering goes to die, or to sink into terminal urine-soaked frailty and confusion. Yesterday it announced it had received …

Discussion: @crash_landers, @tomscocca, @johnmcquaid, @jackshafer, @objectguerilla, @max_read, Digital Media Wire and Baltimore Sun

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:

Netflix packets being dropped every day because Verizon wants more money — Verizon wants to be paid by consumers and Cogent, but Cogent refuses to pay. — The battle over who should pay to carry Netflix traffic is heating up again, and one of the main players blames Verizon's greed …

Discussion: @caseyliss and CNNMoney.com

Stacey Higginbotham / Gigaom:
Direct connection between Comcast and Netflix networks suggests peering agreement reached

Discussion: The Verge, Engadget and BGR

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal:

Is There Any Escape From ‘Recommended for You’? — Based on what The New York Times thinks I'm interested in reading, I am not a fun person. — “Recommended for You,” which tracks readers' habits and predicts their interests, finds me especially interested in the troubles of Gov. Chris Christie …

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM, @dangillmor, @mathewi, @justinbrookman and @sulliview

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:

Proposed FCC study of news organizations sparks outcry — A proposed government study of how media organizations gather news has incited a powerful backlash, particularly among conservatives, who said that it could be part of an official effort to intimidate or second-guess journalists.

Discussion: Media Channel, Erik Wemple, Fox News, Poynter, Hot Air, Los Angeles Times, The Switch, Hit & Run, Mother Jones, @jondelano, The Daily Caller, Mediaite, Broadcasting & Cable, The Verge, The Newspaper Guild and The Hill

Joe Flint / Los Angeles Times: FCC's new closed captioning rules had long journey

Charlie Savage / New York Times:

Attorney General Signs New Rules to Limit Access to Journalists' Records — WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who drew fire last spring over the Justice Department's aggressive tactics for secretly obtaining reporters' phone logs and emails as part of leak investigations …

Discussion: Associated Press

Leo Mirani / Quartz:

Turns out Twitter is even more politically polarized than you thought — This is what Twitter looks like when two groups with different political views talk about the same thing: — As part of a new study on Twitter's network structures, the Pew Research Center and the Social Media Research …

Discussion: @gregdklein, SocialTimes and AppNewser

Pew Internet:
Mapping Twitter Topic Networks: From Polarized Crowds to Community Clusters

Discussion: PBS, Des Moines Register, Business Insider, Al Jazeera America, @accenturesocial, @jesseholcomb, CNET, Washington Post and The Technology Chronicles

Associated Press:

White House bars media from Dalai Lama meeting — WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House defended its decision Friday to bar reporters and photojournalists from a meeting between President Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama, while acknowledging the news media's legitimate interest in covering the two leaders' encounter.

Discussion: Politico, NPPA, @fieldproducer and The Huffington Post

Robert D. McFadden / New York Times:

Garrick Utley, Former NBC Anchor and Foreign Correspondent, Dies at 74 — Garrick Utley, a former anchor for NBC News who for many years was one of a rare breed in television news reporting, a full-time foreign correspondent, died on Thursday night at his home in Manhattan. He was 74.

Discussion: Robert Feder, Capital New York, Gawker, CNN, @glennthrush, @danielalpert and @louiseslaughter

Emma Bazilian / Adweek:

Southern Living Puts its Name on Branded Communities — Diehard fans of Time Inc.'s Southern Living can live in a Southern Living-branded house filled with Southern Living-branded décor, thanks to the brand's formidable stable of brand extensions. There are home goods (furniture …

Discussion: @steve_katz

Bloomberg:

Roku Said to Be Weighing Initial Public Offering in U.S. in 2014 — Roku Inc., the maker of set-top boxes that connect TVs to the Internet, is weighing an initial public offering in the U.S. this year, according to people with knowledge of the matter. — A decision to move ahead hasn't been made …

Discussion: VentureBeat, Gigaom and @zseward

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Sources say Amazon readying a Web TV box competing with Apple TV and Roku, for March rollout — Amazon Gets Its TV Box Ready, Again — Amazon is gearing up to take on Apple and Roku, again. — Industry sources say Amazon is getting ready to launch a Web TV box that would compete …

Discussion: Polygon, 9to5Mac, Pulse 2.0, VatorNews, ReadWrite, Mashable, VentureBeat, AppleInsider, WebProNews, Forbes, GeekWire, MacRumors, Softpedia News, BGR, CNET, TechCrunch, The Verge, App Advice, Business Insider and VG247

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

TV antenna maker Mohu targets cord cutters with new Channels device — Mohu, best known for its Mohu Leaf TV antenna, is introducing a new device that combines over-the-air TV with online video services. The company will launch a Kickstarter campaign for its new Mohu Channels product early next week …

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Dish's Charlie Ergen: I'm Nervous About Comcast-TWC, Surprised Our Business Hasn't Been Worse — Optimism is supposedly one of the qualities people look for in politicians and business leaders. Apparently no one told Charlie Ergen, who seemed less concerned with soothing investors …

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

Om-Niscient: A Much-Deserved Mash Note to Tech Blogger Om Malik — Of course, I was jammed yesterday with a trip and then the big news of Facebook forking over $19 billion for WhatsApp in the endless hamster-wheel cycle that is sometimes my life, so I missed the news about Om Malik.

Discussion: TechCrunch, @mhelft, @hunterwalk, @doctorparadox, @jayrosen_nyu, Om Malik, @mathewi, Talking Biz News and Gigaom

James Ball / Guardian:

Why are all the House of Cards journalists so bad at journalism? — Zoe and the gang can't report, lack ethics and have the common sense of a hacker's guinea pig. Somebody should fire them … Journalists have a guilty pleasure. In fact, we have several.

Discussion: @wesleylowery and @jaredbkeller