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October 2017

The press, branded the 'enemy' by Trump, increasingly trusted by the public: Reuters/Ipsos poll

Americans are increasingly confident in the news media and less so in President Donald Trump’s administration after a tumultuous year in US politics that tested the public’s trust in both institutions, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released Oct 3. The poll of more than 14,300 people found that the percentage of adults who said they had a “great deal” or “some” confidence in the press rose to 48 percent in September from 39 percent last November. Earlier in 2017, President Trump branded the entire industry as the “enemy of the American people.”

The percentage of those who said they had “hardly any” confidence in the press dropped to 45 percent from 51 percent over the same period. Confidence in Trump’s administration moved in the opposite direction. Reuters/Ipsos, which tracked confidence in major institutions every couple of months after the 2016 presidential election, found in late January that 52 percent of Americans had a “great deal” or “some” confidence in the new president’s executive branch. That dropped to 51 percent in the May survey and to 48 percent in the latest poll. Trump took office in January. In comparison, 57 percent of Americans expressed similar levels of confidence in former Democratic President Barack Obama’s outgoing administration in November.

A Jump-Start for Restoring Communications Networks in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands

Hurricane Maria has had a catastrophic impact on communications networks in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. The Federal Communications Commission has been doing a lot to assist with repair and restoration—and that work continues. That’s why I am proposing that the FCC use its Universal Service Fund to help with these efforts. Responding to natural disasters has consumed the bulk of the FCC’s time and attention this season. But there are other important areas under our jurisdiction, and we’ll cover some of them at our upcoming meeting on October 24.

A deeper look at Silicon Valley’s long-term politics

[Commentary] To shed light on the motivations of the tech elite, I and my co-authors at Stanford Graduate School of Business, David Broockman and Neil Malhotra, released the findings from a political survey of over 600 tech company founders. Our results revealed a group that was largely supportive of Democrats and redistribution through higher taxation. That is, they seemed to defy the stereotype of hyper-libertarian big business and the results were received with considerable confusion.

In this post, I’d like to show how these seemingly contradictory beliefs are unified (based on the data). All of the policies supported by the Valley make a lot more sense in the context of their core belief: a radical optimism in the future. “I tend to believe that most Silicon Valley people are very much long-term optimists,” said LinkedIn founder and Hillary Clinton supporter Reid Hoffman. “Could we have a bad 20 years? Absolutely. But if you’re working towards progress, your future will be better than your present.”

[Gregory Ferenstein is the editor of The Ferenstein Wire]

Wireless Internet Service Providers Pitch Fixed Wireless Technology in Forthcoming Infrastructure Bill

Fixed wireless broadband could become a lynchpin in the digital infrastructure portions of any forthcoming Trump Administration infrastructure bill if policymakers are properly educated about its benefits, Wireless Internet Service Provider Association board member Jeff Kohler and Carmel Group consultant Jimmy Schaeffler said. “The economics of fixed wireless networks are very advantageous as compared to anything wireline. We can build networks for roughly 1/5 to 1/10 the cost of laying cable or fiber, so it makes sense for rural America,” Kohler said.

Should we dumb down tech?

[Commentary] Are tech firms too smart? Some people seem to think so, and their proposed restrictions on tech companies could hurt customers. The questions of whether and how tech firms should be allowed to leverage their knowledge are at the core of some recent regulatory proposals, which I describe below. The proponents of more regulations appear to believe that the world would be a better place if tech companies benefitted less from what they know. My concern here isn’t with privacy issues, but with at least three erroneous beliefs underlying these proposals:
Belief 1: The race for knowledge is bad for competition
Belief 2: What you know belongs to others
Belief 3: All “innovations” should be promoted identically

[Mark Jamison is the director and Gunter Professor of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business, was a member of the Trump FCC Transition team]

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