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  2. May 2017

May 2017

Hillary Clinton blames Russian hackers and FBI’s Comey for 2016 election loss

Hillary Clinton attributed her defeat in the 2016 presidential election to interference by Russian hackers and FBI Director James B. Comey, and declared herself to be “part of the resistance” to Donald Trump’s presidency. “If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president,” Clinton told moderator Christiane Amanpour, the CNN anchor, at a Women for Women event in New York. “I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me and got scared off,” Clinton said. Clinton talked about “the unprecedented interference” by a foreign leader “who is not a member of my fan club” — a reference to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, with whom she tangled as secretary of state.

How President Trump is undermining press freedom around the world

[Commentary] Global press freedom has long been in decline and is now at its lowest point in the past 13 years, according to Freedom House’s latest assessment. What is new, and especially disquieting, are the mounting pressures on the media in the United States, including sharp attacks on reporters by the Trump administration. This raises the question of whether America will continue to serve as a model for other countries.

The United States remains an oasis, one of the few places in the world where aggressive journalistic investigation can be practiced with few legal restrictions and little physical danger to reporters. But even here, press freedom has been weakening for some time, well before the inauguration of Donald Trump. Since Trump’s rise to the presidency, however, matters have taken a turn for the worse. The new White House derides and belittles journalists and media organizations in the hope of undermining the credibility of the press. In so doing, the administration is aggressively promoting the notion that nuance and facts are irrelevant — a staple concept of Russian information warfare.

[Michael Arbramowitz is the president of Freedom House. Arch Puddington is a distinguished fellow for democracy studies at Freedom House.]

Why We’re So Hypocritical About Online Privacy

A recent meta-analysis of 166 studies, including 75,269 participants of 34 countries, explored the so-called “privacy paradox,” that is, the puzzling fact that people’s concerns about privacy rarely appear to translate into protective behaviors. Contrary to previous studies, the findings of the meta-analysis revealed that individuals who are more concerned with and informed about privacy tend to use fewer online services, set stronger security settings, and disclose less personal information.

However, when it comes to social media use, there is indeed a privacy paradox, as even individuals who express concerns behave quite carelessly, engaging in uncensored or inappropriate self-disclosure, making a great deal of their digital footprint public, and allowing a wide range of external apps to access their data. It has been estimated that nearly 40% of Facebook content is shared according to the (rather unsafe) default settings, and that privacy settings match users’ expectations only 37% of the time. Thus, it appears that no amount of privacy concerns will make social media users more cautious.

T-Mobile says it will be first in nation to offer nationwide mobile 5G

T-Mobile announced its intentions to build the nation’s first mobile “5G” wireless network, and is planning to use its recent haul in the Federal Communications Commission spectrum auction to pull it off. “We’re going to run at it and run at it hard,” said T-Mobile chief technology officer Neville Ray, who expects the company’s 5G rollout to begin in 2019, with a target of 2020 for full nationwide coverage. Rivals Verizon Wireless and AT&T also have designs on building out the next generation of wireless. “But we’re saying that you’re going to see it at T-Mobile first,” Ray claims.

Legal thinking around First Amendment must evolve in digital age

[Commentary] The internet in its halcyon days was lauded as a open space that could promote free speech in the US and worldwide, but it is now a realm that has settled into domination by a few companies. As we enter an age in which the internet is fully integrated into our daily lives, the main channel by which we access information, a reconsideration of the values of the First Amendment is required.

This was the motivation for a symposium on May 1 at Columbia University called Disrupted: Speech and Democracy in the Digital Age. Attended by a mix of legal professionals, academics, and journalists, the message was clear: Legal thinking around the First Amendment must renew itself in the new era.

[Nausicaa Renner is editor of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism’s vertical at Columbia Journalism Review. ]

Trump campaign accuses CNN of rejecting ad

President Donald Trump's campaign is accusing CNN of refusing to air its new television ad marking Trump's first 100 days in office. A May 2 press release from the Trump campaign chides the news network, which is a familiar target for the president's ire, arguing CNN is trying to stifle free speech and any positive news about the administration's successes in office.

“It is absolutely shameful to see the media blocking the positive message that President Trump is trying to share with the country. It's clear that CNN is trying to silence our voice and censor our free speech because it doesn't fit their narrative," said Michael Glassner, the Trump campaign's executive director. CNN said that it asked the campaign to remove a “false graphic that says the mainstream media is ‘fake news.’” “The mainstream media is not fake news, and therefore the ad is false,” CNN added in explaining its decision to reject the ad.

It’s Time for Co-ops To Stand Up and Embrace Broadband

[Commentary] In the battle to deploy broadband, cooperatives (co-ops) can be a decisive force to cover the rural flanks in states with aggressive broadband adoption goals such as California, New York, and Minnesota. In the more rural states, or ones without stated commitments to broadband, co-ops may have to carry the lion’s share of responsibility if their rural communities are to have a hope for broadband.

Co-ops ultimately exist to meet members’ needs, and currently there’s a burning need for broadband within communities across the nation. There are two ways for co-ops to address the need for better, faster community-owned broadband networks: the problem-solving approach and the creation-orientation approach. Both can work. But the latter might give you more return on your investment.

[Craig Settles is an industry analyst and broadband strategist based in Oakland (CA).]

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