President Obama is tapping some big names from Hollywood to serve on the President’s Committee on Arts and the Humanities.

Among the 25 members announced Monday by the White House were actors Edward Norton, Forest Whitaker, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kerry Washington and Alfre Woodard; CAA partner and managing director Bryan Lourd; independent film producer Liz Manne; and publicist Andy Spahn.

They join a committee that will include Vogue editor Anna Wintour, cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Teresa Heinz, a philanthropist and wife of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

Comcast and NBC Universal have yet to formally announce their deal, but consumer groups and a union are already announcing a major campaign to oppose it.

Representatives of Free Press, the Consumer Federation of America, the Communications Workers of America and the video-download website Fuze told a news conference Friday that any deal would be bad for consumers, independent programmers and journalists and give the combined company way too much power.

If there were any doubts about whether a December workshop of the Federal Trade Commission on the future of journalism was going to get serious attention from the media industry, they ended Monday with the release of a listing of participants.

President Obama Wednesday announced his intent to nominate former Time magazine editor and CNN chairman-CEO Walter Isaacson to chair the Broadcast Board of Governors that oversees the Voice of America, Radio Sawa, Alhurra TV and other U.S. overseas broadcasting services.

The president also named Michael Lynton, chairman-CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, and former Bush administration White House press secretary Dana Perino as among members of the broadcast board.

The Writers Guild of America, East, is endorsing a proposed New York City Council resolution urging the Federal Communications Commission to adopt net neutrality standards for internet service providers.
The FCC is considering a rule that would bar generally bar internet service providers from giving video and other content from favored providers a faster path to consumers' desktops than other legal content.

"Transparency" seems to be the new keyword in the Motion Picture Association of America's quest to gain larger support for its anti-piracy campaign.

The MPAA moved on Thursday to try to diffuse some of the public interest group opposition to the Obama administration's pursuit of anti-counterfeiting trade agreements with other countries by making details of what is being sought in the agreements more public.