Today a number of high-profile websites, including Wikipedia, Reddit and Google, are either going dark or changing their sites to protest the SOPA and PIPA acts currently working through Congress. The bills are ostensibly meant to protect content piracy, but the web companies, along with others such as Facebook, argue that it goes too far, and is too ambiguous in its wording.
TV news has, until today, largely not covered the story, which led some conspiracy theorists to speculate that was because of orders from the corporate side of the companies (all of the major media companies, including NBCUniversal, News Corp., Disney and Time Warner, are in favor of SOPA). Today however, with the blackouts, SOPA and PIPA have been in the news hourly.
As Brian Stelter notes in the New York Times however, disclosures have not always been accompanying the coverage:
All three of the network morning news shows mentioned the protest, but during their initial reports none disclosed the point of view of their parent companies. NBC’s “Today” show, however, did make a point of disclosing it during a conversation with Marissa Mayer, a Google vice president.