FCC COMMISSIONER WHO VOTED TO APPROVE COMCAST/NBC MERGER LEAVES TO JOIN COMCAST

Four months after the Federal Communications Commission approved the merger of Comcast and NBC Universal, one of the commissioners who approved the deal said she would join Comcast to oversee its government affairs office.

Meredith Attwell Baker, a former Commerce Department official in the George W. Bush administration, announced on Thursday that she will leave the F.C.C. when her term expires at the end of June. At Comcast, she will serve as senior vice president of government affairs for NBC Universal.

The departure drew immediate criticism from group that opposed the Comcast-NBC merger. Craig Aaron, the president and chief executive of Free Press, a media interest group, called the move “just the latest, though perhaps most blatant, example of a so-called public servant cashing in at a company she is supposed to be regulating.”