May 2017

A vast majority of Americans—95 percent—say they are concerned about businesses’ collection and sale of their personal information without permission, according to a survey taken after the recent rollback of federal privacy rules for broadband providers. The Federal Communications Commission privacy rules had required providers such as Comcast and AT&T to get affirmative consent from subscribers before collecting or selling their data. Since President Donald Trump signed a bill into law rescinding those rules, the public debate over internet privacy has escalated.

The survey, published May 4 by software company Anchorfree, asked 2,000 consumers their views on internet access and privacy. Although 90 percent of Americans say internet access must be safe and secure, they are divided as to who should be responsible for ensuring such security. Two out of five Americans say the federal government is responsible, while another two out of five point to network providers, the survey said.

[Commentary] It's become clear in recent months that President Donald Trump’s growling at the national press has, in many ways, backfired. I’m excited about the press’s reinvigoration, too, but I’m also worried about President Trump’s anti-press words and deeds—and their trickle-down consequences for state and local journalists.

I contacted 16 editors or publishers of state and local newspapers in California, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas to ask if their papers had seen post-election bumps in subscriptions or readership. Their circulations range from 8,000 to 200,000 daily. Seven responded, and only one reported growth. The others didn’t know why they hadn’t seen growth or said their local focus might be to blame. I don’t want to lean too heavily on these results, which are anecdotal. But they only add to my concern that Trump’s anti-press antics will inspire unprecedented attempts to delegitimize the state and local press.

[Jonathan Peters is an attorney and an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Kansas]

Democrats and Republicans, who already tend to place their trust in different news sources and rely on different outlets for political news, now disagree more than ever on a fundamental issue of the news media’s role in society: whether news organizations’ criticism of political leaders primarily keeps them from doing things they shouldn’t – or keeps them from doing their job.

Today, in the early days of the Trump administration, roughly nine-in-ten Democrats (89%) say news media criticism keeps leaders in line (sometimes called the news media’s “watchdog role”), while only about four-in-ten Republicans (42%) say the same. That is a 47-percentage-point gap, which stands in sharp contrast to January-February 2016, when Americans were asked the same question. Then, in the midst of the presidential primary season, nearly the same share of Democrats (74%) and Republicans (77%) supported the watchdog role. This partisan split is found in other attitudes about the news media, though none in so dramatic a fashion as with the watchdog role. Compared with 2016, Democrats and Republicans are more divided on whether the press favors one side in its political coverage, on how much trust they have in national news media, and on how good a job national news organizations are doing in keeping them informed.