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July 2015

Some progress, some distance to go on multistakeholder Internet governance

Internet governance has received a great deal of attention from policymakers over the past year, and is bound to receive more attention in the coming months. In March 2014, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced that it would hand over its oversight of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) contract to a multistakeholder body, setting off of a flurry of activity in preparation for the transition. Given the technical details and the number of potential stakeholders around the world, Internet governance can quickly become confusing for the uninitiated. Fortunately, Stuart N. Brotman has outlined the transition process in his most recent paper titled “Multistakeholder Internet governance: A pathway completed, the road ahead”.

The multistakeholder model seeks to include participants from around the globe, but some countries remain skeptical of the approach. Russia and China would prefer greater involvement in Internet governance, a position that India also held until June 2015. In line with its transition plan, the U.S. and many of its allies have firmly opposed calls for government or multilateral control. However, deciding who to include among the many potential stakeholders could become a point of contention as the model develops. Brotman recognizes that not all stakeholders should have equal standing. After the transition occurs, the success of the new Internet governance approach should not be taken for granted. Brotman highlights the need for future assessments of the multistakeholder model to correct potential shortcomings. A non-hierarchical model may suffer from poor accountability if every stakeholder represents only their own interests. Inclusion of many voices may also come at the cost of efficiency if stakeholders cannot resolve issues in a timely manner. There will be many more details to smooth out leading up to the transition. According to Brotman, “Although the pathway toward multistakeholder Internet governance now seems well established, the contours of the road ahead largely remain undefined.”

New Features Added to Congress.gov Based On Your Feedback

Since the unveiling of Congress.gov in September of 2012, we have been constantly adding new features with each release, and many of the features in this release are based directly on your feedback.

Accessibility: We want to make Congress.gov more accessible, and our new feature, “Listen,” helps us deliver on this goal. Listen appears on bill summary pages and will read the text of the bill summary aloud to you.

Enhanced E-mail Alerts: We released legislative e-mail alerts in February 2015, and you provided us with some great feedback on this feature. You let us know that you when you receive an e-mail alert concerning a bill, you need the title of the bill to appear in the alert. We appreciate your feedback and have added bill titles to legislative e-mail alerts.

More Appropriation Tables With Enhanced Content: We have delivered new appropriation tables with enhanced content, starting with a table for the most recent fiscal year, 2016. We continue to work our way back, and now have appropriation tables with enhanced content going back to 2005.

Search Within Committee and Member Pages: In the past, you could only refine your results on member profile and committee pages using the facets menu. With the new release, you can use the powerful “Search Within” results feature on committee and member pages to quickly locate the legislation and reports you need.

The danger of using history to guide modern Internet policy

[Commentary] What should guide the decisions of today’s policymakers when it comes to the Internet? Network neutrality proponents tend to argue that policymakers should look to the values held by the Internet’s pioneers. But as it turns out, using modern interpretations of old values makes for very bad policy. Here’s why. When proponents of heavy-handed regulation invoke the values of the Internet’s pioneers, they paint a picture of noble cyber-warriors dedicated to creating a “free, open, and neutral Internet.” They then swiftly link this to their regulatory weapon of choice, net neutrality, arguing that these rules are needed to preserve the values of the olden days. The problem with this argument is (at least) two-fold:

Our understanding of old values is malleable: The problem is that, as time passes, it becomes increasingly difficult to figure out what the original story was really like. This is certainly true in the tale of a “free, open and neutral Internet,” where we now have two very distinct narratives.

What was right for them might not be right for us: The Internet is a living, dynamic network that changes over time. Today’s Internet is not the same as the Internet of yesterday. What it did for its early users, and what they might have valued as its “open” and “neutral” principles differ markedly from current expectations.

What does this mean for regulation? There is no place for invoking historic values in regulating the modern Internet. Regulation of today’s Internet must be guided by the expectations held for it in the future. The past -- however imperfectly recalled or selectively invoked – is past. Enshrining “old” values will at best preserve a historic museum piece, incapable of responding to current challenges. A better approach is to design regulations – if they are needed at all – on dispassionate economic, legal, and technical assessments of their expected effects on total societal welfare.

[Bronwyn Howell is general manager for the New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation]

Netflix is accidentally inventing a new art form — not quite TV and not quite film

[Commentary] The inertia that sets in when you hit the end of an episode and Netflix autoplay kicks in is just too great much of the time. If you watch one episode of "Narcos", it will take more work to avoid watching additional episodes than it will to just watch the whole season. Netflix counts on this with all of its shows. So here's what I'm wondering: Has Netflix accidentally invented a new art form?

Netflix, for various business reasons (mostly involving foreign sales and the fact that it doesn't own any of its hit shows), continues to be bound by the episodic restrictions that TV has lived under since its earliest days. Nearly every single one of its episodes is roughly a half-hour or roughly an hour long (though it has experimented with longer episode lengths on "Orange Is the New Black" and "Sense8"). But Netflix fundamentally doesn't think about TV in terms of those episodes. It thinks about them in terms of seasons, and it encourages its creators to do so as well. I caught up with Ted Sarandos, the company's chief content officer, to ask him about this very thing, and he said the company increasingly thinks of its series not in terms of episodes but in terms of shows. He pointed to the slow-boiled Southern gothic family drama Bloodline -- which drew criticism for being so slow when it launched -- as being particularly exemplary of this approach. Telling a 10- or 12-hour story that will hopefully lead to a 10- or 12-hour sequel story a year later isn't really a natural format for storytellers, and like all storytelling shifts, it will require a fair amount of trial and error. But it's time, I think, for people like me who write about television to get to where the audience already is and start treating these shows as they're intended to be seen -- as full seasons, not individual pieces.

The good, the bad and the ugly of the digital revolution’s destructive impact on jobs

Businesses that ride the tidal wave that is the digital revolution are steadily wiping out those that don’t. This is a dominant theme of our lifetimes, as new jobs are being created and others are being eliminated at a pace humanity hasn’t seen before.

The good: Just as the agrarian and industrial revolutions made us more efficient and created more value, it follows that the digital revolution will do the same.
The bad: Yes, we’ve been through revolutions before, but never one this fast. Computing power doubles every two years. This makes it harder for us to plan out our careers, and identify the skills that can’t be automated. Because these changes are happening so fast, the number of workers whose skills suddenly become worthless will be larger than in past transitions.
The ugly: If self-driving cars and automated drone delivery become a reality, what happens to every delivery driver, truck driver and cab driver? Swaths of the population won’t be able to be retrained with skills needed in the new economy. Inequality will rise.

To Increase Diversity, Tech Firms Must First Rethink Their Strategy on Campus

[Commentary] In 2014, many Silicon Valley tech firms began speaking publicly about the need for greater diversity in their workforces. They issued reports revealing dismal numbers, and some announced initiatives to improve the statistics. Here are some specific ways in which the private sector can work with universities to nurture a more diverse talent pool:

  • Provide engineering-specific mentors, beginning freshman year.
  • Provide connection points on campus and beyond.
  • Recruit at a broader range of campuses.

[Tony Luckett is director of partnership for social learning and recruiting platform Piazza]

Analysis

Net Neutrality – An Update

July 29, 2015 (FCC Oversight, Budget and Reform)

BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for WEDNESDAY, JULY 29, 2015

A busy day includes Wireless Broadband and the Future of Spectrum Policy (preview below) https://www.benton.org/calendar/2015-07-29


FCC OVERSIGHT, BUDGET & REFORM
   Recap: FCC Oversight Hearing
   Taking Care of America: Whose Job Is It? - Michael Copps op-ed
   Revamping Predictive Judgments & Interim Rules - FCC Commissioner O'Rielly press release
   Remarks of FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly on Implementing Regulatory Reform at the FCC - speech [links to web]

INTERNET/BROADBAND
   15% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they? - research
   USDA Announces First Private Sector Investments through US Rural Infrastructure Opportunity Fund - press release [links to web]
   FCC Chairman Wheeler's Response to Members of Congress Regarding GAO Report Additional Actions Could Help FCC Evaluate Its Efforts to Inform Consumers
   Public Knowledge Publishes Net Neutrality Paper Investigating Zero-Rating Practices - press release
   What we’ve learned from one year of Internet.org - Dominic Basulto op-ed
   Watts 'hackathon' takes a step toward narrowing the digital divide [links to web]

WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
   Senate to kick off broadband review
   Four reasons the FCC is ill-suited to handle spectrum allocation - AEI op-ed [links to web]
   For Smartphone Users, Spectrum Is Speed - Scott Cleland op-ed [links to web]
   Choosing the Right Way - AT&T press release [links to web]

OWNERSHIP
   The FCC Must Work to Ensure the Public Interest in the Wake of the AT&T/DirecTV Merger - Public Knowledge press release
   Commissioner O'Rielly: AT&T-DirecTV Conditions Less Onerous Than Some

HEALTH
   Verizon teams up with digital health company to give broadband to low-income patients
   Securing Electronic Health Records on Mobile Devices - NIST press release [links to web]
   More than $38 million awarded to improve coordinated health information sharing in communities across America - HHS press release [links to web]

LABOR
   Labor secretary weighs in on 'gig economy' [links to web]
   ASNE releases 2015 Newsroom Diversity Results - press release [links to web]
   As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change [links to web]

TELEVISION
   Over-the-top video firms push back against FCC MVPD rule making [links to web]
   Jon Stewart’s progressive legacy - analysis [links to web]

ADVERTISING
   DirecTV false advertising beef with FTC headed for trial in December [links to web]

ELECTIONS AND MEDIA
   The New York Times’ Botched Story on Hillary Clinton - Norm Ornstein op-ed
   The Clinton rules are at the heart of the New York Times's botched Hillary story - Vox analysis [links to web]
   Political Campaigns Go Social, But E-mail Is Still King [links to web]
   Donald Trump Doesn’t Represent the Best of America: Why it’s Time for Him to Go - Gary Shapiro op-ed [links to web]
   Bernie Sanders Faces Uphill Battle for Hollywood Support [links to web]

GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
   China Pushes to Rewrite Rules of Global Internet
   Right-wing media ‘hijacking’ Republican Party, concludes Harvard report
   How We’re Changing the Way We Respond to Petitions - White House press release [links to web]
   Disruptive Technology that Could Transform Government-Citizen Relationships [links to web]
   Lawmakers could be violating robocall restrictions [links to web]
   What’s Inside the Justice Department’s Secret Cybersecurity Memo? [links to web]
   NIST to Host First App Challenge to Improve Data Access - press release [links to web]
   Inside Jon Stewart’s Secret Visits With President Obama [links to web]

POLICYMAKERS
   The White House’s Alpha Geeks - [links to web]

COMPANY NEWS
   Cable One's broadband-first strategy has 'some critical holes,' analyst says [links to web]

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FCC OVERSIGHT, BUDGET & REFORM

RECAP: FCC OVERSIGHT HEARING
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Kevin Taglang]
The House Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology held a Federal Communications Commission oversight hearing on July 28, 2015. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and fellow Commissioner Ajit Pai testified. The issues on the agenda were the Broadcast Incentive Auction, the FCC’s revision of competitive bidding rules governing the Designated Entity (DE) program, Privacy, and FCC Process Reform. Generally, the Republicans at the hearing talked about their concerns with FCC policies, while Democrats generally defended the commission under Chairman Wheeler as furthering competition and protecting consumers. [more at the URL below]
benton.org/headlines/recap-fcc-oversight-hearing | Benton Foundation | Subcommittee Chairman Walden | B&C | FCC Chairman Wheeler | Commissioner Pai | B&C | B&C – LPTV | The Hill
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TAKING CARE OF AMERICA: WHOSE JOB IS IT?
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Michael Copps]
[Commentary] We live in an exceptional country, we like to tell ourselves. If that’s really so, why are we letting it crumble around us? Regular readers of this column are familiar with my thoughts about the sad state of our communications ecosystem in both telecom and media. We lag in broadband compared to many other nations—in its deployment, adoption, speed, and price. We have allowed a few huge telecom and media companies to control the content and distribution of the broadband Internet and the exciting new technologies that should be making this a golden age of communications. The communications sector has grown to one-sixth of the U.S. economy, yet the majority party in Congress treats it as a side-show. While we should be investing in expanding our communications infrastructure, many legislators are at work to cut the budget of the Federal Communications Commission—the agency charged with encouraging the deployment of broadband and advanced communications across the land. Nobody can be a fully-functioning citizen in the twenty-first century without access to a high-speed, affordable broadband Internet. Or these legislators attempt every stratagem to cut consumer protections and otherwise hamstring the FCC with appropriations riders as punishment for its historic net neutrality rules. It’s more than curious, because the FCC is funded not by tax dollars but by fees for licensing and spectrum use. It actually makes money for the government, so all this budget-cutting is kabuki theater for those whose real goal is gutting government, no matter what the program. The FCC is not allowed to use most of the money it raises. Can’t the nay-sayers in Congress recognize a profit center when they see one? Think about that. The “know the cost of everything and value of nothing” crowd is telling the agency that should be looking after our communications safety, cyber-security, and threats of Internet terrorism that it should reduce its largely self-funded activities. The FCC workforce has actually declined by double digit percentages since I went there as a Commissioner in 2001—yet it has so much more that it should be doing for consumer protection and national security. I can predict this much: if and when another act of terrorism like 9/11 occurs and our communications infrastructure fails again, people will be asking Congress how it was, after all the intervening years, that those supposed to be keeping watch weren’t really watching. It won’t be a rhetorical question; I suspect an electoral house-cleaning would ensue. The costs of addressing our various national shortfalls are, obviously, enormous. These are not one-shot, one hundred day, or even one thousand day endeavors. They can be achieved only with a sense of commitment and national mission matching the best America has ever done.
[Copps leads the Media and Democracy Reform Initiative at Common Cause.]
benton.org/headlines/taking-care-america-whose-job-it | Benton Foundation
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REVAMPING PREDICTIVE JUDGMENTS & INTERIM RULES
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly]
[Commentary] In addition to setting overall timelines for Federal Communications Commission review of agency rules, as I previously recommended, there are two agency practices that warrant re-evaluation: where the agency relies on a “predictive judgment” to establish a policy or rule; and where the agency adopts an “interim” rule. In both cases, the FCC supposedly relies on the best information to make a decision that is inherently time limited. Unfortunately, when utilized, there is often no follow-up with hard facts or final rules. That means those offering or receiving communications services in the marketplace are forced to adhere to rules based on stale decisions or outdated information. We can and must do better. The FCC’s new Process Review Task Force should add these practices to its list due for scrutiny.
benton.org/headlines/revamping-predictive-judgments-interim-rules | Federal Communications Commission
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INTERNET/BROADBAND

WHO’S NOT ONLINE?
[SOURCE: Pew Research Center, AUTHOR: Monica Anderson, Andrew Perrin]
Fifteen percent of US adults do not use the Internet. The size of this group has changed little over the past three years, despite recent government and social service programs to encourage internet adoption. But that 15 percent figure is substantially lower than in 2000, when Pew Research first began to study the social impact of technology. That year, nearly half (48 percent) of American adults did not use the internet. A 2013 Pew Research survey found some key reasons that some people do not use the internet. A third of non-internet users (34 percent) did not go online because they had no interest in doing so or did not think the internet was relevant to their lives. Another 32 percent of non-internet users said the internet was too difficult to use, including 8 percent of this group who said they were “too old to learn.” Cost was also a barrier for some adults who were offline – 19 percent cited the expense of internet service or owning a computer. The latest Pew Research analysis also shows that internet non-adoption is correlated to a number of demographic variables, including age, educational attainment, household income, race and ethnicity, and community type. Despite some groups having persistently lower rates of internet adoption, the vast majority of Americans are online. Over time, the offline population has been shrinking, and for some groups that change has been especially dramatic. For example, 86 percent of adults 65 and older did not go online in 2000; today that figure has been cut in half. And among those without a high school diploma, the share not using the internet dropped from 81 percent to 33 percent in the same time period.
benton.org/headlines/15-americans-dont-use-internet-who-are-they | Pew Research Center
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FCC CHAIRMAN WHEELER'S RESPONSE TO MEMBERS OF CONGRESS RE: GAO REPORT ADDITIONAL ACTIONS COULD HELP FCC EVALUATE ITS EFFORTS TO INFORM CONSUMERS
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler]
In a response to several members of Congress on July 15, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler discussed a May 15 Government Accountability Office report recommending the FCC conduct or commission research on the effectiveness of the FCC's efforts to provide consumers with broadband performance information. Chairman Wheeler wrote that the FCC has taken steps already to carry out the recommendations of the report, including continuing to evaluate its current Measuring Broadband America (MBA) effort to provide better information to consumers about broadband performance. Chairman Wheeler wrote, "In summary, the FCC and its staff appreciate GAO's analysis and recommendations and have begun to implement them. Should you have any questions or comments regarding this matter, I would be pleased to discuss them with you."
benton.org/headlines/fcc-chairman-wheelers-response-members-congress-regarding-gao-report-additional-actions | Federal Communications Commission
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PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE PUBLISHES NET NEUTRALITY PAPER INVESTIGATING ZERO-RATING PRACTICES
[SOURCE: Public Knowledge, AUTHOR: ]
Public Knowledge is happy to announce our newest working-paper, Exploring Zero-Rating Challenges: Views from Five Countries, by Carolina Rossini, Vice President of International Policy at Public Knowledge and Taylor Moore, our 2015 Google Policy Fellow. This paper examines zero-rating practices on a global scale, focusing on their effects in five countries to add to the growing international network neutrality debate. Carolina Rossini, Vice President of International Policy at Public Knowledge, said, “The zero-rating debate is one of the toughest issues out there, and has called into question various issues related to net neutrality and competition policy. Countries have changed their clear-cut laws to accommodate some practices. These zero-rating models include a variety of goals, ranging from marketing to adding more clients to your network to providing public services related information to connecting more people to the Internet. However, we need to get past the rhetoric of good intentions and look at the facts to inform policymakers. This is necessary so we can foster innovation and promote the public interest as we move forward with strong net neutrality rules around the globe.” Taylor Moore, Google Policy Fellow at Public Knowledge, said, "Admittedly, before the case studies I was unaware of the global significance of these issues. However, its significance and multifaceted nature are illustrated by the variation in each country's response to net neutrality and zero-rating. I think that these case studies will not only contribute to the ongoing debate of these subjects, but will also aid in future formulations of policy considerations. Going forward, I think that Public Knowledge’s approach of analyzing the global response will be beneficial.”
benton.org/headlines/public-knowledge-publishes-net-neutrality-paper-investigating-zero-rating-practices | Public Knowledge | read the paper
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WHAT WE'VE LEARNED FROM ONE YEAR OF INTERNET.ORG
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Dominic Basulto]
[Commentary] Facebook is celebrating the one-year anniversary of the launch of Internet.org, its much-hyped initiative to bring Internet access to the world’s unconnected population. So how has Internet.org stacked up against expectations since its initial debut in Zambia in summer 2014? Providing the world with free Internet connectivity. By conventional benchmarks, Internet.org seems to be performing well. After all, more than 9 million people have ventured online as a result of accessing Facebook’s Internet.org mobile app. And the initiative has taken off from its initial launch in Zambia to include a dozen mobile operators and 17 partner countries (including India, Pakistan and Indonesia) spread across three different continents (Asia, Latin America and Africa). But there have been hiccups along the way -- most notably in India, where the very concept of using the Internet.org app as the way Indians access the Internet has raised troubling questions about Facebook’s role. Is the company a gateway or a gatekeeper? Facebook claims it’s a gateway, but there’s something that rubs people the wrong way when they are told which sites are free, and which are not, and how they must access them.
[Dominic Basulto is a futurist and blogger based in New York City]
benton.org/headlines/what-weve-learned-one-year-internetorg | Washington Post
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM

SENATE BROADBAND REVIEW
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: David McCabe, Mario Trujillo]
July 29 marks the start of a series of hearings on wireless broadband by the Senate Commerce Committee. The biggest-name on the witness list is Federal Communications Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. The rest of the panel is comprised of experts and CTIA chief Meredith Attwell Baker. The committee said that the witnesses will be asked to discuss "how federal spectrum policy may need to change to meet national challenges and what role Congress should play in establishing a successful spectrum strategy over the next few decades." In her testimony, Commissioner Rosenworcel will call for the incentive auction model to be explored for the spectrum held by the federal government: "The future of spectrum policy requires incentives," she will say. "We need a federal spectrum policy that is based on carrots, not sticks. If we want a robust and reliable spectrum pipeline, we need to make sure that federal authorities see gain--and not just loss--when their airwaves are reallocated for new mobile broadband use." Baker, a former FCC commissioner herself, will pledge industry's efforts to accommodate increased data usage by consumers, but will say lawmakers and industry must address a possible shortage of spectrum together.
benton.org/headlines/senate-kick-broadband-review | Hill, The
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OWNERSHIP

THE FCC MUST WORK TO ENSURE THE PUBLIC INTEREST IN THE WAKE OF THE AT&T/DIRECTV MERGER
[SOURCE: Public Knowledge, AUTHOR: John Bergmayer]
The Federal Communications Commission has recently released the full text of its Order approving the merger of AT&T and DirecTV, with conditions. While we’re pleased that the FCC has addressed many of the most important competitive issues we have raised with this merger, we remain concerned that FCC has not done everything we believe would have been helpful to prevent competitive harms. Public Knowledge has had two areas of concerns with this merger. First, by buying DirecTV, AT&T would gain an increased incentive to discriminate against competing video services. We have argued that the FCC could not approve this merger without taking steps to counter those harms. Second, especially in light of the consolidating communications marketplace, we have argued that the FCC needs to take seriously its legal responsibility to block mergers unless it can be assured of a concrete public interest benefit. Under the Communications Act, it’s not enough for the companies to show how they would benefit from a merger. The FCC needs to identify concrete ways that a merger would benefit the public.
benton.org/headlines/fcc-must-work-ensure-public-interest-wake-attdirectv-merger | Public Knowledge
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COMMISSIONER O'RIELLY: AT&T-DIRECTV CONDITIONS LESS ONEROUS THAN SOME
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Commissioner Michael O'Rielly of the Federal Communications Commission took aim at the FCC's timeline for approving the AT&T-DirecTV merger and various conditions imposed, then explained that the reason he did not dissent from the conditions -- as did Commissioner Ajit Pai -- was because AT&T and DirecTV indicated they would accept them and "they don’t appear to cause direct harm to other market participants." In fact, he said the conditions were at least "less onerous than some of those extracted in past mergers"-- he did not specify. Commissioner O'Rielly voted for the merger, and concurred in the conditions per his explanation above. But he still had plenty of bones to pick with them. For example, he said the condition on interconnection disclosure, including submitting deals to the FCC, "inches us that much closer to rate regulation." He called the limitations on usage-based billing "inane." He also said that its imposition of discounted stand-alone broadband for low-income consumers is clearly not merger-specific and will likely increase prices for the majority of customers who will be subsidizing those discounts. "[T]he Commission just can’t pass up an opportunity to push its own objectives, even if it is unrelated to the matter at hand," he said about some of the conditions.
benton.org/headlines/commissioner-orielly-att-directv-conditions-less-onerous-some | Multichannel News
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HEALTH

VERIZON TEAMS UP WITH DIGITAL HEALTH COMPANY TO GIVE BROADBAND TO LOW-INCOME PATIENTS
[SOURCE: Crain’s New York Business, AUTHOR: Jonathan LaMantia]
A Manhattan company that focuses on managing chronic conditions in the home is working with Verizon to provide broadband to low-income patients. The firm, eCaring, contracts with payers and home care agencies to provide care management software to reduce avoidable readmissions among their patients. But because many patients served by eCaring's product don't have high-speed Internet, access to broadband has been an issue. The company now supplies patients with a Samsung tablet and a Verizon data plan so that home health aides can send alerts and communicate with care managers. The eCaring software is now designed specifically for Samsung Galaxy Tab tablets, although that agreement could expand to include other Samsung devices. The company's clients include insurers and home care agencies; Samsung ships its tablets to those clients and provide tech support. The tablets will be leased by eCaring insurance clients, such as Manhattan insurer Healthfirst. Robert Herzog, eCaring's chief executive, sees his company's service as an important method of keeping patients out of hospitals. For instance, one home aide encountered a patient with slurred speech. A manager was alerted, and sent a nurse to the home to make sure the patient hadn't suffered a stroke. The incident actually was a diabetic episode, and the nurse was able to administer insulin. "That returned the person's blood sugar to a normal range and avoided a trip to the emergency room," Mr. Herzog said. "We do that kind of thing every week." The company's clients include Senior Health Partners (Healthfirst's managed long-term care plan), Metropolitan Jewish Health System and several home care agencies, including Premier, Best Care, Allen and All Metro.
benton.org/headlines/verizon-teams-digital-health-company-give-broadband-low-income-patients | Crain’s New York Business
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ELECTIONS AND MEDIA

THE NEW YORK TIMES' BOTCHED STORY ON HILLARY CLINTON
[SOURCE: The Atlantic, AUTHOR: Norm Ornstein]
[Commentary] I have read The New York Times since I was a teenager as the newspaper to be trusted, the paper of record, the definitive account. But the huge embarrassment over the story claiming a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton for her e-mails -- leading the webpage, prominent on the front page, before being corrected in the usual, cringeworthy fashion of journalists who stonewall any alleged errors and then downplay the real ones -- is a direct challenge to its fundamental credibility. And the paper’s response since the initial huge error was uncovered has not been adequate or acceptable. Holding a story until you are sure you have the facts -- as other reporters did, with, it seems, “government officials” shopping the story around -- or waiting until you can actually read the documents instead of relying on your good sources, so to speak, providing misleading and slanted details, is what they could have done differently. If reporters are hot to publish their scoops, it is up to editors, in Washington and New York, to put the brakes on. And that is especially true if reporters have previously made mistakes and overreached on stories. Someone should be held accountable here, with suspension or other action that fits the gravity of the offense. I want, and need, the old New York Times, the leader of responsible journalism, the paper of record back.
benton.org/headlines/new-york-times-botched-story-hillary-clinton | Atlantic, The
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS

CHINA AND THE RULES OF THE GLOBAL INTERNET
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: James Areddy]
As social media helped topple regimes in the Middle East and northern Africa, a senior colonel in the People’s Liberation Army publicly warned that an Internet dominated by the US threatened to overthrow China’s Communist Party. Ye Zheng and a Chinese researcher, writing in the state-run China Youth Daily, said the Internet represented a new form of global control, and the US was a “shadow” present during some of those popular uprisings. Beijing had better pay attention. Four years after they sounded that alarm, China is paying a lot of attention. Its government is pushing to rewrite the rules of the global Internet, aiming to draw the world’s largest group of Internet users away from an interconnected global commons and to increasingly run parts of the Internet on China’s terms. It envisions a future in which governments patrol online discourse like border-control agents, rather than let the US, long the world’s digital leader, dictate the rules. President Xi Jinping—with the help of conservatives in government, academia, military and the technology industry—is moving to exert influence over virtually every part of the digital world in China, from semiconductors to social media. In doing so, President Xi is trying to fracture the international system that makes the Internet basically the same everywhere, and is pressuring foreign companies to help.
benton.org/headlines/china-pushes-rewrite-rules-global-internet | Wall Street Journal
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RIGHT-WING MEDIA 'HIJACKING' REPUBLICAN PARTY, CONCLUDES HARVARD REPORT
[SOURCE: Poynter, AUTHOR: James Warren]
It’s only fitting that Republican candidates are lobbying Fox News intensely to be among the 10 selected for the first GOP presidential debate on Aug. 6. The Fox role as sponsor bolsters the thesis of a new study that argues conservative media now have undue influence in the Republican Party. Jackie Calmes, a veteran Washington correspondent for The New York Times, makes the case that it’s now no longer Republican Party leaders setting the party agenda. No, “It is conservative media -- not just talk-show celebrities Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and Laura Ingraham, but also lesser-known talkers like Steve Deace, and an expanding web of ‘news’ sites and social media outlets with financial and ideological alliances with far-right anti-government, anti-establishment groups like Heritage Action, Americans for Prosperity, Club for Growth and FreedomWorks. Calmes did her research and writing during a recent Harvard fellowship. Her report is published by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She’s now back at her paper’s DC bureau. Calmes and others concede that the existence of very conservative media is nothing especially new. Indeed, other books and academic research have explored the same terrain, including a very revealing 2004 book, “The Republican Noise Machine,” by David Brock, a onetime conservative polemicist who by then had made an ideological turn and is now a high-profile Hillary Clinton acolyte. And while conservative media will surely discount Calmes’ analysis merely due to her affiliation with what some deem the Great Liberal Nemesis, namely The New York Times, it’s clear that their impact has grown sharply since Brock’s own transformation, as detailed by many longtime Washington observers of the nexus of politics and media.
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15% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?

Fifteen percent of US adults do not use the Internet.

The size of this group has changed little over the past three years, despite recent government and social service programs to encourage internet adoption. But that 15 percent figure is substantially lower than in 2000, when Pew Research first began to study the social impact of technology. That year, nearly half (48 percent) of American adults did not use the internet.

A 2013 Pew Research survey found some key reasons that some people do not use the internet. A third of non-internet users (34 percent) did not go online because they had no interest in doing so or did not think the internet was relevant to their lives. Another 32 percent of non-internet users said the internet was too difficult to use, including 8 percent of this group who said they were “too old to learn.” Cost was also a barrier for some adults who were offline – 19 percent cited the expense of internet service or owning a computer. The latest Pew Research analysis also shows that internet non-adoption is correlated to a number of demographic variables, including age, educational attainment, household income, race and ethnicity, and community type.

Despite some groups having persistently lower rates of internet adoption, the vast majority of Americans are online. Over time, the offline population has been shrinking, and for some groups that change has been especially dramatic. For example, 86 percent of adults 65 and older did not go online in 2000; today that figure has been cut in half. And among those without a high school diploma, the share not using the internet dropped from 81 percent to 33 percent in the same time period.

Senate to kick off broadband review

July 29 marks the start of a series of hearings on wireless broadband by the Senate Commerce Committee.

The biggest-name on the witness list is Federal Communications Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. The rest of the panel is comprised of experts and CTIA chief Meredith Attwell Baker. The committee said that the witnesses will be asked to discuss "how federal spectrum policy may need to change to meet national challenges and what role Congress should play in establishing a successful spectrum strategy over the next few decades." In her testimony, Commissioner Rosenworcel will call for the incentive auction model to be explored for the spectrum held by the federal government: "The future of spectrum policy requires incentives," she will say. "We need a federal spectrum policy that is based on carrots, not sticks. If we want a robust and reliable spectrum pipeline, we need to make sure that federal authorities see gain--and not just loss--when their airwaves are reallocated for new mobile broadband use." Baker, a former FCC commissioner herself, will pledge industry's efforts to accommodate increased data usage by consumers, but will say lawmakers and industry must address a possible shortage of spectrum together.

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