CNBC's Closing Bell hid its own conflict of interest and the industry ties of the telecommunications industry front group Broadband for America while providing co-chairs of the group a platform to attack government regulations of the Internet and broadband access.

On the July 14 edition of CNBC's Closing Bell, host Kelly Evans interviewed Harold Ford, Jr. and John Sununu about the FCC's latest proposed regulations, introducing them as “Broadband for America honorary co-chairs,” without explaining what Broadband for America was. Both Ford and Sununu insisted that the Internet should not be treated as a public utility and claimed that new regulations would slow Internet speeds and innovation.

Though Evans, to her credit, did pose challenging questions to Ford and Sununu about the possibility of companies paying internet providers to speed up customers' access to their content and the lack of competing broadband providers faced by many Americans, she failed to disclose the interest that Broadband for America and her own network's corporate parent has in limiting government regulation of broadband access.

Broadband for America has, among its members, major national broadband providers such as Comcast, Cox Communications, and Verizon. Its members list includes the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, which donated $2 million to Broadband for America in 2012.

And CNBC's parent company NBC is owned by the Comcast Corporation, which prides itself on its Comcast Cable division being “the nation's largest video, high-speed Internet and phone provider to residential customers.”