April 2017

BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2017

Today's Event -- Technology, accountability, and international law, Brookings -- https://www.benton.org/node/257812

COMMUNICATIONS & DEMOCRACY
   The Trump White House Still Hasn’t Made Peace With The Press [links to Huffington Post]
   Via Skype, the White House opens press briefings to Trump-friendly non-reporters [links to Benton summary]
   Melania Trump settles lawsuits with Daily Mail [links to Washington Post]
   A new study finds political polarization is increasing most among those who use the internet least [links to Vox]
   Tech Creates Our Political Echo Chambers. It Might Also Be A Solution [links to Wired]
   How American protest music evolved from Civil War refrains to viral Trump videos [links to Vox]
   Tech Alone Won’t Be Enough to Reboot Progressive Politics [links to Wired]
   How the techniques of 19th-century fake news tell us why we fall for it today [links to Nieman Lab]

JOURNALISM
   TV viewers have been sending ‘fake news’ complaints to the FCC [links to Columbia Journalism Review]
   Legalized sale of browser histories should worry journalists [links to Columbia Journalism Review]
   Savannah Guthrie, Jake Tapper and More on Fake News, Fairness and When Trump Calls Your Phone [links to Hollywood Reporter]
   "Truth is always secondary to the spectacle": a media critic on how we cover war [links to Vox]
   NAB Launches Initiative to Improve Race-Related News Coverage [links to Broadcasting&Cable]
   Conway: Media covering Trump a ‘hot mess’ on Twitter [links to Hill, The]
   Recognizing American journalism’s finest tweetstorms [links to Columbia Journalism Review]
   Op-ed: Foundations That Care About the Spread of Ideas Should Finance Journalism [links to Chronicle of Philanthropy]
   Q&A: Walt Mossberg on the future of the tech beat [links to Columbia Journalism Review]
   Five Months After The Election, Some Outlets Still Don't Understand The Fake News Problem [links to Media Matters for America]
   How Axios' Mike Allen gets access to Trump's White House [links to Vox]
   Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on longevity and Trump [links to Los Angeles Times]

INTERNET/BROADBAND
   The Federal Communications Commission’s plan of using open innovation to close the digital divide - AEI op-ed
   A plan to preserve the internet - Walt Mossberg editorial [links to Benton summary]
   The internet of (economic) things - Brookings analysis
   Consumer Technology Association: Rhode Island, Delaware have fastest internet in country [links to Benton summary]
   Computer & Communications Industry Association Knock FCC's BDS Reform Proposal [links to Broadcasting&Cable]
   Timeline for Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan still ‘up in the air’ [links to Hill, The]
   MoffettNathanson: Unlimited Wireless Plans Poses Small Threat to Wired Broadband [links to Multichannel News]

SECURITY/PRIVACY
   Fact-checking FCC Chairman Pai and FTC Chairman Ohlhausen on Broadband Privacy [links to Public Knowledge]
   EU to US: Undoing Broadband Privacy Signals US Is Not Serious About Privacy Protections [links to Public Knowledge]
   The Steady Rise of Digital Border Searches [links to nextgov]
   Editorial: Restore the 4th amendment at the US border [links to Los Angeles Times]
   Claude Barfield: Communications, Russian hacking, and Section 702 reauthorization [links to American Enterprise Institute]

ADVERTISING
   Op-ed: Why Sexism Doesn’t Sell: Demeaning Imagery in Marketing Is Never Harmless [links to AdWeek]
   Google blocks invasive Burger King ad from taking over Google Home [links to CNN]
   Burger King thought it had a great idea. Instead, it ended up with a Whopper of a problem. [links to Washington Post]
   Vviek Wadhwa: What Google and Facebook must do about their advertising problem [links to Washington Post]
   Stronger Privacy Laws Could Save Advertising From Itself [links to Wired]

OWNERSHIP
   CenturyLink-Level 3 Merger Gets More State Approvals [links to Broadcasting&Cable]

CONTENT
   Why Your Local TV Station Will Determine the Fate of YouTube TV [links to Benton summary]
   Op-ed: Republicans of all people should shun federal online gambling ban [links to Hill, The]
   How Google Book Search Got Lost [links to Medium]

LABOR
   Reality Show Workers Stage a Walkout to Push Contract Talks Forward [links to New York Times]
   Journalists at Gothamist and DNAinfo Agree to Join Labor Union [links to New York Times]

CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
   Op-ed: Can the GOP Turn Back the Tide of Town Hall Anger? [links to New York Times]
   Angry crowds blast House Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden at Columbia Gorge town halls [links to Oregonian, The]

COMPUTERS
   With nothing left to lose, desktop makers are reinventing the stationary computer, [links to Wall Street Journal]
   Private Sector & Civil Society Provide Comments to NTIA in Support of Bug Bounty Programs [links to New America]

EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
   Remarks of FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly at NG911 Institute [links to Federal Communications Commission]

FCC REFORM
   Thomas Hazlett: Ajit Pai’s New FCC “Office of Economics & Data” is a Home Run [links to Technology Policy Institute]

STORIES FROM ABROAD
   State of Digital Rights: Impressions From RightsCon 2017 [links to Public Knowledge]
   This is how the Russian media covered the missile strikes in Syria [links to Washington Post]
   Bollywood could bring feminism to the masses. Why doesn’t it? [links to Washington Post]

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INTERNET/BROADBAND

BROADBAND DEPLOYMENT ADVISORY COMMITTEE
[SOURCE: American Enterprise Institute, AUTHOR: Roslyn Layton]
[Commentary] Shortly after being designated as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai announced his moon shot: closing the digital divide. In a refreshing and pragmatic break from central planning of the broadband economy, the FCC launched the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC), a diverse group of experts tasked with making recommendations on how to accelerate the deployment of high-speed internet access by reducing and removing regulatory barriers to infrastructure investment. To be sure, the US is the global leader in broadband infrastructure investment, accounting for one-quarter of the world’s total, but the process to deploy infrastructure could be improved. The BDAC demonstrates the open innovation model to broadband deployment policy, recognizing that the solutions to closing the digital divide reside not necessarily in the FCC, but in the knowledge of a multitude of actors on the ground.
[Layton is a PhD Fellow at the Center for Communication, Media, and Information Technologies (CMI) at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Denmark. She also served on President Trump's FCC Landing Team.]
benton.org/headlines/federal-communications-commissions-plan-using-open-innovation-close-digital-divide | American Enterprise Institute
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THE INTERNET OF ECONOMIC THINGS
[SOURCE: Brookings, AUTHOR: Jonathan Sallet]
[Commentary] There are economic issues that may arise as the “internet of things” IoT matures; Here are six that bear watching:
Economic Productivity: some believe now that IoT can boost productivity growth by increasing the efficiency of traditional business operations such as manufacturing, transportation, and retail.
The Nature of Competition: In antitrust terms, many more kinds of products and services could occupy adjacent levels of a value chain in a “vertical” relationship. This occurs where consumer demand for two products is closely related.
How open will IoT be? History suggests that policymakers may scrutinize any IoT players that wield excessive power over consumers, perhaps in the antitrust context or as a separate question of regulation.
Who Owns Big Data, Your Data? Big banks and Silicon Valley are waging an escalating war over your personal financial data.
Standards Set Terms of Competition: An established standard can boost competition by allowing different devices to communicate with each other. It can also grant the winner a big marketplace advantage.
Economic Regulation and the Impact on Competition: Regulation can either intentionally or inadvertently shape competition.
[Sallet is a visiting fellow at Brookings in Governance Studies. Previously, he served as deputy assistant attorney general for Litigation at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division from 2016-17. Prior to joining the Division in 2016, Mr. Sallet was general counsel at the Federal Communications Commission.]
benton.org/headlines/internet-economic-things | Brookings
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