BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for THURSDAY, JUNE 1, 2017
TODAY -- SHLB Conf and What Comes Next: Net Neutrality, Innovation, and the Future of Competition https://www.benton.org/calendar/2017-06-01
COMMUNICATIONS & DEMOCRACY
White House Details Ethics Waivers for Ex-Lobbyists and Corporate Lawyers
During the campaign and the early months of his presidency, the concern over Trump’s Twitter use was political. Now the worry is increasingly legal.
Clinton and President Trump are once again locked in a Twitter war [links to Vox]
Editorial: Curbing free expression is the wrong response to the killings in Portland [links to Los Angeles Times]
Linda Peek-Schacht: Changing the faces at the White House briefing and adding a war room won’t bridge President Trump’s credibility gap [links to Brookings]
Leakers in the Trump administration may have trouble invoking Obama’s whistleblower protections [links to Quartz]
‘Something fishy’ is going on with Trump’s twitter account, researchers say [links to Washington Post]
Op-Ed: Is Assaulting Journalists Now Acceptable In the US? [links to Huffington Post]
NETWORK NEUTRALITY
Should Two Trump Two Million?
National Legal and Policy Center Says Title II-Fans Are Gaming FCC Docket
Democratic Sens Seek FBI Probe of FCC DDoS Attack [links to Benton summary]
AT&T: Blocking, Slowing Appear Allowable Under Title II
ISPs Have Their Own Definition of Net Neutrality
Richard Bennett: Net neutrality will never be anything more than a vague aspiration with no clear definition [links to Technology Review]
Make No Mistake: Chairman Pai Wants to Roll Back the Net Neutrality Rules. Here's What You Need to Know. - Free Press analysis [links to Benton summary]
Rep Blackburn: FCC's rollback of net neutrality rules is 'a positive step' [links to Benton summary]
Chairman Pai Aide on NPR: FCC Will Protect Free, Open Internet [links to Benton summary]
Commission Impossible: How and why the FCC created net neutrality [links to Benton summary]
Experts: Fight to reverse net neutrality comes with cost [links to Benton summary]
This Plugin Shows You What the Web Is Like Without Net Neutrality [links to Motherboard]
Netflix CEO: Net neutrality is no longer our ‘primary battle’ [links to Vox]
Media Matters: The Hill is a dumping ground for anti-net neutrality pieces backed by undisclosed telecom money [links to Media Matters]
MORE INTERNET/BROADBAND/TELECOM
Akamai: Average U.S. Broadband Speed Rises to 18.7 Mbps [links to telecompetitor]
Would Means-Testing Bring More Efficiencies to the High-Cost Program? - FCC blog
SECURITY/PRIVACY
President Trump's use of private cellphone raises security concerns
Body cameras are key for police accountability. We can’t let them erode privacy rights. [links to Washington Post]
JOURNALISM
New York Times Will Offer Employee Buyouts and Eliminate Public Editor Role
New York Times editor: Local news is the biggest ‘crisis’ in journalism [links to Poynter]
ELECTIONS
Hillary Clinton says her ‘Obama 3.0’ data strategy lost to fake news [links to Verge, The]
CONTENT
How Twitter Is Being Gamed to Feed Misinformation [links to New York Times]
Hillary Clinton urges platforms to ‘hurry up’ and fix moderation [links to Vox]
CNN Fires Kathy Griffin From New Year’s Eve Broadcast Over Trump Photo [links to New York Times]
OWNERSHIP
Time Warner’s CEO says its $85 billion sale to AT&T is all about battling Google and Facebook [links to Benton summary]
WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
In 2017, how much low-, mid- and high-band spectrum do Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and Dish own, and where? [links to Benton summary]
GOVERNMENT AND COMMUNICATIONS
Why Is Access To Public Records Still So Frustratingly Complicated? [links to Benton summary]
POLICYMAKERS
Chairman Pai Announces Strachan To Serve As Legislative Affairs Director - press release [links to Benton summary]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
China’s New Cybersecurity Law Leaves Foreign Firms Guessing [links to New York Times]
Twitter Fails EU Standard on Removing Hate Speech Online [links to New York Times]
Banned From Russian TV, A Putin Critic Gets His Message Out On YouTube [links to National Public Radio]
EU will add up to 8,000 free Wi-Fi hot spots by 2020 [links to Verge, The]
German court rejects mother's request to access deceased daughter's Facebook [links to Hill, The]
Venezuela: Public Knowledge Joins Other Groups in Expressing Concern Over State of Online Rights [links to Public Knowledge]
MORE ONLINE
Cory Doctorow: Technology is making the world more unequal. Only technology can fix this [links to Guardian, The]
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COMMUNICATIONS AND DEMOCRACY
ETHICS WAIVERS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Eric Lipton, Steve Eder]
President Trump has given at least 16 White House staff members dispensation to work on policy matters they handled while employed as lobbyists or to interact with their former colleagues in private-sector jobs. The details on these so-called ethics waivers — more than five times the number granted in the first four months of the Obama administration — were made public after an intense dispute between the White House and the Office of Government Ethics, which had been pushing the Trump administration to stop granting such waivers in secret. The list of waivers includes high-profile names such as Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, and Kellyanne Conway, a senior White House adviser. They had to be granted waivers because of their prior work with organizations such as the Republican National Committee, which Priebus once ran, and because they continue to have contact with those organizations as part of their White House work. But the waivers granted by the White House are also going to former lobbyists, despite Trump’s campaign vow to try to reduce the influence of lobbyists in Washington.
benton.org/headlines/white-house-details-ethics-waivers-ex-lobbyists-and-corporate-lawyers | New York Times | Washington Post
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TRUMP’S TWITTER USE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Peter Baker, Glenn Thrush]
There was a time in the not-too-distant past when President Donald Trump refrained from flamethrowing messages on Twitter. That time is over. Never mind that his aides have asked him to stop. Never mind that now the lawyers have told him to stop. Even though his White House has been warned that tweets could be used as evidence against him, President Trump has made clear in the days after returning from a largely Twitter-free overseas trip that he fully intends to stick to his favorite means of communication. Throughout 2016’s campaign and into the early months of his presidency, the concern among Trump’s advisers was mainly political. Every time the president let loose with one of his 140-character blasts, it distracted from his agenda and touched off a media frenzy that could last for days. But now the worry has turned increasingly legal. With multiple investigations looking at whether the president’s associates collaborated with Russia to influence the election, any random, unfiltered tweet could become part of a legal case.
benton.org/headlines/during-campaign-and-early-months-his-presidency-concern-over-trumps-twitter-use-was | New York Times
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NETWORK NEUTRALITY
SHOULD TWO TRUMP TWO MILLION?
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Michael Copps]
[Commentary] On May 18, I had the privilege of joining a people’s protest outside Federal Communications Commission headquarters in Washington (DC). Inside on that same morning, two intransigent and backward-looking commissioners (they constitute the FCC majority) announced their intention to dismantle the good and court-approved network neutrality rules put in place by the previous FCC. Their intention is to close the open internet. Meanwhile more than 2,000,000 Americans had already contacted the Commission directly, the overwhelming majority seeking to keep the net neutrality rules and guarantee an internet that serves us all rather than kowtow to big cable and bloated telecom. In the May 18 match-up, 2 trumped 2,000,000, and the semi-final proposal was circulated, with final approval likely late this summer or early fall. Unless even more of us get involved.
[Michael Copps served as a commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission from May 2001 to December 2011 and was the FCC's Acting Chairman from January to June 2009.]
benton.org/headlines/should-two-trump-two-million | Benton Foundation
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NLPC SAYS TITLE II FANS ARE GAMING DOCKET
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
The National Legal and Policy Center, a political and policy lobbying group, has fired the latest shot in the battle over network neutrality comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission, saying that if its analysis is correct, it will ask Congress to investigate. Countering pushback from Title II fans who have said net neutrality foes are flooding the Title II docket with fake comments, the NLPC said it has found evidence of "massive deception" among the pro-Title II contingent and its own flood of questionable input. The group said it has concluded, based on its own analysis, that for up to 20% of all the pro-net neutrality comments filed so far, either the e-mail address and name don't match or the same email address was used to email multiple comments -- sometimes thousands of them -- including addresses "culled from spammer and hacker databases" and generated by a fake email address site. The NLPC said it plans to have a "professional data forensics expert" vet the comments.
benton.org/headlines/national-legal-and-policy-center-says-title-ii-fans-are-gaming-fcc-docket | Multichannel News
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ATT: BLOCKING, SLOWING APPEAR ALLOWABLE UNDER TITLE II
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
The federal judges who upheld the Federal Communications Commission's TItle II classification of Internet service providers in 2016 have signaled that even under those rules, ISPs could block content or slow certain traffic, just so long as they created a "walled garden" that had clear signage signaling that was what they were doing. That is according to a new blog post from Hank Hultquist, VP of federal regulatory for AT&T, which strongly opposed Title II. Hultquist cites the concurring opinion from judges Sri Srinivasan and David Tatel earlier in May in the en banc (full court) decision of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit not to review the three-judge panel ruling last year to uphold the FCC's Open Internet order. Srinivasan and Tatel wrote the majority opinion in that panel decision. "In the past," said Hultquist, "supporters of Title II often alleged that without reclassification, ISPs would be free to block unpopular opinions or viewpoints that they disagreed with. In the understanding of the DC Circuit panel majority, it seems that the Title II order does not touch such practices as long as an ISP clearly discloses its blocking plans to customers."
benton.org/headlines/att-blocking-slowing-appear-allowable-under-title-ii | Broadcasting&Cable | to me
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ISPS HAVE THEIR OWN DEFINITION OF NN
[SOURCE: Morning Consult, AUTHOR: Mariam Baksh]
Internet service providers have been among the fiercest critics of the Federal Communications Commission’s two-year-old network neutrality rules aimed at preventing companies like Verizon and Comcast from dictating how fast — or slow — online content can be accessed. That doesn’t mean ISPs oppose network neutrality — they just have a different definition for it, Comcast Senior Executive Vice President David Cohen said during a panel discussion in Washington. Cohen endorsed the recent FCC move that begins reversing Obama-era rules that classified the internet as a “utility” under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. “Getting rid of Title II does not mean getting rid of net neutrality,” Cohen said at Free State Foundation’s telecommunications policy conference. “You can support net neutrality rules, but you don’t have to do that under all of the baggage that comes with Title II.”
benton.org/headlines/isps-have-their-own-definition-net-neutrality | Morning Consult
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MORE INTERNET/BROADBAND/TELECOM
WOULD MEANS-TESTING BRING EFFICIENCIES TO THE HIGH-COST PROGRAM?
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly, FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn]
The American people rightfully expect that all federal programs operate as efficiently as humanly possible and are targeted to help those truly in need. As Commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission, we have an obligation – as stewards of federal programs funded by monthly fees on American’s communications bills – to improve the functionality and effectiveness of the programs we oversee, including the Federal universal service fund (USF). Failure to do so would waste consumers’ hard-earned income, diverting it from the intended purposes and undermining public confidence in the programs. We should end the practice of spending scarce USF high-cost support to illogically subsidize the cost of communications services for very rich people who happen to live in the more rural portions of our nation. Because of our budgetary constraints, each dollar spent subsidizing service unnecessarily is a dollar that is not being used to help bring broadband to unserved Americans, particularly those who cannot afford the full cost of service. We seek comment on whether, and if so how, to implement means-testing within the high-cost universal service program.
benton.org/headlines/would-means-testing-bring-more-efficiencies-high-cost-program | Federal Communications Commission | B&C
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SECURITY/PRIVACY
TRUMPS USE OF PRIVATE CELLPHONE RAISES SECURITY CONCERNS
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: Vivian Salama]
President Donald Trump has been handing out his cellphone number to world leaders and urging them to call him directly, an unusual invitation that breaks diplomatic protocol and is raising concerns about the security and secrecy of the US commander in chief’s communications. President Trump has urged leaders of Canada and Mexico to reach him on his cellphone, apparently. Of the two, only Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken advantage of the offer so far, the officials said. President Trump also exchanged numbers with French President Emmanuel Macron when the two spoke immediately following Macron’s victory earlier in May. The notion of world leaders calling each other up via cellphone may seem unremarkable in the modern, mobile world. But in the diplomatic arena, where leader-to-leader calls are highly orchestrated affairs, it is another notable breach of protocol for a president who has expressed distrust of official channels. The formalities and discipline of diplomacy have been a rough fit for President Trump — who, before taking office, was long easily accessible by cellphone and viewed himself as freewheeling, impulsive dealmaker.
benton.org/headlines/president-trumps-use-private-cellphone-raises-security-concerns | Associated Press
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JOURNALISM
NYT ELIMINATES PUBLIC EDITOR ROLE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Daniel Victor]
The New York Times offered buyouts to its newsroom employees, aiming to reduce layers of editing and requiring more of the editors who remain. In a memo to the newsroom, Dean Baquet, the executive editor, and Joseph Kahn, the managing editor, said the current system of “backfielders” and copy editors — two separate groups who have different tasks before a story is published — would be replaced with a single group of editors who would be responsible for all aspects of a story. Another editor would be “looking over their shoulders before publication.” In a separate memo, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher, said The Times would be eliminating the position of public editor. Liz Spayd, the current public editor, will leave The Times on June 2. The buyouts are aimed primarily at editors, but reporters and others in the newsroom would be free to apply as well, the memo said. Baquet and Kahn said that the savings would be used to hire as many as 100 more journalists.
benton.org/headlines/new-york-times-will-offer-employee-buyouts-and-eliminate-public-editor-role | New York Times
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