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November 2016

Donald Trump is going to war with CNN. Again.

Seven weeks before taking the oath of office, President-elect Donald Trump spent part of his night retweeting angry messages about CNN's coverage of his bogus voter fraud claims — including one tweet from a teenager — then continued the tirade into the morning of Nov 29. The tweetstorm came one week after President-elect Trump met with a group of TV executives and journalists, including CNN President Jeff Zucker, in a session that attendees expected to be part of a peacemaking effort but which turned out to be an airing of grievances against the media. With his latest spray of complaints, President-elect Trump has once again shattered any notion that he will tone down his anti-press rhetoric. This is the approach that got him elected, of course. Still, it's hard to see what an incoming president stands to gain by engaging in the kind of social media trolling most often associated with teenage boys — and inviting the comparison by literally quoting a teenage boy.

Media companies to lobby Trump for loosening of cross-ownership rules

Count local TV station owners among the industries emboldened by President-elect Donald Trump. In changing of the guards at the White House, the local TV industry sees an opportunity in their ongoing quest to toss out the Federal Communication Commission's rules on media cross-ownership that bar media companies from owning newspapers and TV stations in the same market.

The National Association of Broadcasters, a trade group for TV station owners, "is cautiously optimistic a Trump FCC will take a fresh look at reforming outdated local broadcast ownership rules," said Dennis Wharton, NAB's executive vice president of media relations. "These are 'I Love Lucy' era rules in a 'Modern Family' world." The rules, devised in 1975, specifically prohibit media companies from owning a newspaper and a TV station in the same local market. Companies are also barred from owning more than one top-4-in-ratings TV station in any market.

Building Tools for Digital Activism

An interview with one of the Black Lives Matter movement's most prominent voices, DeRay Mckesson.

With his now-iconic blue vest, DeRay Mckesson, now the interim chief of Human Capital for Baltimore City Public Schools, has balanced using his platform online and off in order to draw attention to matters such as public safety and law enforcement reform. He has protested against police violence in places like Ferguson (MO); Baton Rouge (LA), and Charleston (SC). Through Campaign Zero, he and other BLM activists designed a policy plan calling for police reform. He even ran for Baltimore mayor in 2016, and though he lost, he drew widespread attention to his effort to bring BLM to the halls of government, where real change happens.

'Fake news' isn't the problem — mainstream news with an agenda is

[Commentary] Talk to people on the anti-“Mainstream media” side of the culture war, Donald Trump supporters or not, and they will tell you that The New York Times or The Washington Post are no more reliable than Breitbart or the conspiracy-theory site Infowars.

Comparing the mainstream media in the United States to the state-controlled Russian media that routinely traffic in outright hoaxes and blatant propaganda is factually wrong and unfair. But the media must do a better job and invite a greater diversity of viewpoints. Otherwise, its ability to counter fake news will continue to erode, with dangerous consequences for us all.

[Cathy Young is a contributing editor for Reason magazine and a columnist for Newsday.]

Bipartisan Online Speech Bill, the Consumer Review Fairness Act, Passes

The Senate unanimously passed a bipartisan bill hailed as striking a blow for online free speech.The Consumer Review Fairness Act of 2016 (HR 5111) now heads to President Barack Obama's desk.

The bill effectively disallows so-called "anti-disparagement clauses" that are meant to prevent negative online reviews by making them punishable by fines or promising lawsuits as part of those lengthy terms of service agreements that most people likely do not pore over before using an online service. The bill does not immunize online reviewers from civil actions for defamation, slander or libel or prevent any party's right to remove anything that is "false or misleading, harassing, abusive, obscene, vulgar, sexually explicit, inappropriate with respect to race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or other intrinsic characteristic," so it is not a flat prohibition and could contain some wiggle room in terms like "misleading" or "abusive."

Mobile Broadband Forum: 4.5G WTTH Helping Accelerate Next Generation Fixed Wireless

Growing fixed wireless momentum across the globe is leading to the concept of wireless-to-the-home (WTTH), promising fiber like speeds that are increasingly seen as lower cost alternative option for traditional wireline fixed broadband service. WTTH was on full display recently with particular emphasis on 4.5G WTTH, during Huawei’s Mobile Broadband Forum (MBBF), which took place in Tokyo. WTTH is seen as the next generation of fixed wireless, providing speeds of up to 1 Gbps, a dramatic improvement over first generation fixed wireless. Huawei likes to call it WTTH 2.0. The coming launch of 5G wireless will initially be focused on fixed wireless applications (WTTH 3.0), before providing true mobile broadband services, but a recurring theme at MBBF, is you don’t have to wait for 5G.

Close to Home: Joy Road plight is common in rural areas

[Commentary] For most Californians, getting high-speed Internet at home takes about a week. You figure out which company provides broadband and at what cost, make an appointment for service installation and get connected. But in rural Sonoma County, that process has taken 500 residents along Joy Road four years — and the reasons have everything to do with the high cost of broadband infrastructure and the way telecom companies avoid providing high-speed Internet service in sparsely populated areas.

Although the greater Joy Road area will soon get broadband, thanks to a $7.7 million infrastructure grant from the state Public Utilities Commission’s California Advanced Services Fund, the story of Sonoma County’s “Gigafy Occidental” project is typical of what rural residents face throughout the state. It is also an allegory about the need to subsidize high-speed Internet infrastructure in rural areas.

[Tom West is manager of the North Bay/North Coast Broadband Consortium.]

Inside Alphabet’s Jigsaw, the powerful tech incubator that could reshape geopolitics

Google's Jigsaw launched earlier in 2016, in conjunction with the company’s reorganization into Alphabet, with the goal of tackling “geopolitical challenges.” So the world’s second-most valuable corporation is openly trying to influence international affairs. That’s interesting. As a follower of Jigsaw (and one of the approximately five people who finished Julian Assange’s 224-page manifesto on the incubator), I’ve read plenty of conspiracy theories about empire-building—not to mention endless Google press releases regurgitated into puff pieces. But Jigsaw is still not very well understood, and neither are its politics.

And so I went to visit the company’s New York office in Chelsea this summer, featuring, among other things, the largest collection of sparkling waters in human history. I was there to learn more about what Jigsaw is really about. Even more than its specific products, I wanted to get a handle on how the Alphabet incubator sees its own role at a time of great technological and social change—and understand the political philosophy behind its choices.

Rethinking technology policy for the next half century

[Commentary] The political upheaval in Washington offers a rare chance to fundamentally rethink the way we govern our economy’s leading edge technology industries. These industries contain both the nation’s largest infrastructure investors (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast) and also many of the world’s most valuable firms (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, IBM, Oracle). To the extent government policy played a role in this success, it is partly the result of design but also part happy accident. The Internet grew up outside the regulatory reach of the 1934 Communications Act, and the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which contemplated the internet only briefly, directing a policy of regulatory restraint. The good judgement and good luck, however, may be running out.

[Bret Swanson is president of Entropy Economics LLC]

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