AMC Networks is marking Black History Month with a new series of public service announcements featuring members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Among the main objectives of the 56-member caucus are criminal justice reform, combatting voter suppression and expanding access to broadband.

It is the ninth such PSA campaign in partnership with the Caucus and Color of Change.

The spots began running February 1 and will air throughout the month across AMC, BBC America, IFC, SundanceTV, WE tv, and ad-supported VOD, as well as stream on AMC's ALLBLK African-American targeted streaming service.

The latest campaign, tagged “A Closer Look at the Black Experience,” features eight caucus members including chairwoman Rep. Joyce Beatty (pictured above) and majority whip Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), whose daughter, Mignon, is former acting FCC chairwoman and whose focus has been on expanding access to broadband for all. The PSAs — four thematic spots — focus on the caucus‘ mission of empowerment, voting rights, positive portrayals of Blacks in media and health and wellness.

The PSA campaign is in addition to special Black History Month programs and digital content. ■

Fuse Media will premiere a new special in October that will focus on the upcoming election.

The special, Fuse Town Hall: Our Votes Matter, will premiere Oct. 23 and will feature discussions about issues that, heading into the election, are important to the network's multicultural, millennial audience, said the network. 

The special will be moderated by Singer/author Amara La Negra and will feature political rights activist María Teresa Kumar, LGBTQ+ and Latinx advocate Ingrid Duran, immigrant rights activist Sara Mora, former Houston city council candidate Marcel McClinton, environmental activist Dr. Mustafa Santiago Ali, human and civil rights activist Pete White, and climate change activists Julian Brave NoiseCat and Jamie Margolin.

Fuse has also partner with Color of Change PAC, which will participate in and promote the Town Hall special and will work with Fuse to encourage its young, multicultural audience to register and vote through linear, social and digital content pieces featuring musicians, comedians and activists. 

“We are coming together with our partners and a strong, diverse group of influencers, activists and experts to encourage and rally Americans as we head closer to November 3,” Miguel Roggero, Fuse Media CEO said in a statement.  “As young people are heading to the polls to decide who will help them move the country forward, our goal is to inform voters about the importance of casting a ballot on both a macro and micro level.”

MTV created and aired an 8 minutes and 46 second spot, the length of time it took for George Floyd to be killed by Minneapolis police, in support of Black Lives Matter and Color of Change.

The spot features a black screen with white letters reading “I can’t breathe” and the sound of breathing. It also features a clock counting down from 8:46. At the end it calls on viewers to join Color of Change and to call on public officials to take action against police brutality and racial inequality.

In addition to MTV, the spot ran at 5 p.m. ET on ViacomCBS’s other Entertainment and Youth Group cable networks--Comedy Central, Paramount Networks, Pop, VH1, TV Land, CMT and Logo--as well as on CBS Sports Network, BET and Nickelodeon.

“We are seeing the tragic impact of discrimination affect our community in a myriad of ways – including the disproportionate number of people of color who have been impacted by COVID-19 – another life or death fight for our breath,” said Chris McCarthy, president of the Entertainment & Youth Group at ViacomCBS in a memo to staff Monday.

“We have partnered with to include a call to action – an important step to help all of us understand that we have a responsibility to get involved and be part of the solution. Please be on the lookout for a note later today on how all of us can get involved in Black Out Tuesday tomorrow,” he said. “We know there is a lot of work ahead of us, and I am committed to action beyond these words with all of you. We must continue to work together, to look within, and to support one other and our fellow humans – all with compassion for each other.” 

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and Color of Change don't trust Facebook's civil rights audit and want it to verify the status of that audit in the wake of reports it has tried to undermine its critics.

In a letter to the company's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and COO Sheryl Sandberg, the groups, actually a coalition of more than 200 groups, said the company needed to take immediate steps to restore public trust, trust that has been eroded with each new revelation about how the company had "undermined our democracy and civil society."

Facebook has been a lightning rod for criticism inside and outside the Beltway, thanks in large part to the Cambridge Analytica user data sharing fiasco.

Related: Cruz Says Big Tech Needs Reining In

The diversity groups were hurling plenty of those lightning bolts. "For years, Facebook’s refusal to acknowledge and/or chronic mismanagement of civil and human rights violations occurring on the platform have raised many questions about Facebook—primarily, whether you are willing or able to fix the toxic online environment that you have allowed to flourish."

Facebook appeared to signal it was willing to try by conducting the civil rights audit. But the groups cited a New York Times story about how the company "chose to work in the shadows (and with unscrupulous partners) to undermine your critics, foment anti-Semitism, validate right-wing conspiracy theories" and more. Given all that, they said, they can only conclude that "adverse forces and incentives within the company are undermining the civil rights audit process."

They also say an internal Facebook investigation doesn't quite cut it, which is why they wanted an independent third party to do the vetting.

The groups also did not like that the announcement of the audit was twinned with one about an investigation into charges of anti-conservative bias. Zuckerberg has told legislators that there is no systematic bias, but that their concerns about a liberal bias in Silicon Valley generally were legitimate.

They said that they were dismayed that the twin announcements appeared to suggest one was balancing the other.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and Color Of Change want an update on the audit's status and suggest the company needs:

• "A C-Suite level Chief User Advocate charged with representing users’ needs who will work in close consultation with civil rights organizations;
• "A public review of practices and mechanisms put in place by Facebook to address civil rights violations and increase public transparency;
• "A public report with recommendations and a timeline for implementation shared upon conclusion of the review;
• "The creation of a public-facing board committee or task force that is provided with the resources and commitment by leadership at the highest levels necessary to ensure full implementation of the report’s recommendations."

The FCC may have been hit by a distributed denial of service attack, but that did not keep the "Restoring Internet Freedom" docket from exploding with comments.

At press time, the docket held over 500,000, up from about 30 thousand before John Oliver's call for Internet trolls and minions to flood the docket.

The FCC said this week it had suffered a DDoS attack not long after Oliver's show wrapped up Sunday night, but it has still been able to post that volume of comments.

But some of the most recent of those comments are comments in support of FCC Chairman Ajit PAi's plan to roll back Title II (common carrier) classification of ISPs and review the Open Internet order rules.

More than a dozen of the comments on the first page of the online docket all began the same way: "The unprecedented regulatory power the Obama Administration imposed on the internet is smothering innovation, damaging the American economy and obstructing job creation. I urge the Federal Communications Commission to end the bureaucratic regulatory overreach of the internet known as Title II and restore the bipartisan light-touch regulatory consensus that enabled the internet to flourish for more than 20 years. The plan currently under consideration at the FCC to repeal Obama's Title II power grab is a positive step forward and will help to promote a truly free and open internet for everyone."

AT press time the "technology" subreddit was filled with comments about that form complaint, saying it was obviously a "hired shillbot" and "obvious astroturfing.