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[Commentary] The debates are an institution now, and among the most watched television events in America. They are one place in the modern campaign — perhaps the only place — where the voter is treated with respect.
They are the one time when the major candidates appear together side by side under conditions they do not control. They are a relief from the nasty commercials that dominate the campaign, fed by donations that are effectively unlimited and anonymous. Broadcasters provide the television time for the debates, without commercials, as a rare public service. I have been privileged to participate in some form in all 27 presidential and 8 vice presidential debates so far. In 1960, I helped my boss, the former Illinois governor and presidential candidate Adlai E. Stevenson, persuade Congress to exempt debates from the equal-time law, making it possible for broadcasters to cover them without having to include every candidate for the presidency, no matter how marginal. (Congress failed to provide the same exemption in 1964, 1968 and 1972, so there were no debates those years.) After the Federal Communications Commission acted to exempt the debates from the equal-time law, the League of Women Voters revived the debates, in 1976, and asked me to help.
Let me suggest that after you watch the debate, you turn off your television set and do your best to avoid the spin that will follow. Talk about what you saw and heard with your family, your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers. You are smarter than the spinners. It’s your decision that matters on Nov. 6, not theirs.
A Glimmer in the Vast Wasteland
For every five commercials Mitt Romney and his allies ran in Colorado in the last two weeks of September, President Barack Obama and Democrats ran seven, accusing Romney of having a “tough luck” attitude toward the middle class and asserting that President Obama has brought the economy back from the brink. In Florida, the disparity was greater. The number of pro-Obama ads outnumbered pro-Romney ads by almost 50 percent — some 13,000 of them accusing Romney of outsourcing jobs to China, trying to gut Medicare and hiding his tax returns from the public.
The story was the same in most of most of the other battlegrounds. In Ohio and in Iowa, in Norfolk (VA) and on the Boston stations that feed New Hampshire, President Obama out-advertised his rival after the parties’ nominating conventions, according to data compiled by the political advertising monitoring firm Kantar Media/CMAG. Obama’s continued advantage on the airwaves, which counters Democratic predictions that he would be far outgunned by Romney and his allied “super PACS” by now, may help explain why polls in most of the competitive states have shifted in his direction over the last month.
Obama Outspending Romney on TV Ads
[Commentary] Higher education is at a crossroads not seen since the introduction of the printing press.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other campuses, the upheaval today is coming from the technological change posed by online education. But that's only the half of it. Just as edX, Coursera, Udacity and other online-learning platforms are beginning to offer the teaching of great universities at low or no cost, residential education's long-simmering financial problem is reaching a crisis point. Universities have been sharing some of their course content—such as reading material and videotaped lectures—free online for more than a decade. (MIT launched OpenCourseWare in 2001.) In the past year, however, they've developed technology that lets them actually teach in an interactive format designed specifically for online learning. Given its possible scale, online education may improve the financial model of residential education.
If a university's courses can be offered online for small fees to people around the world, we might arrive at a sweet spot where high numbers of online learners are getting extremely good value for their fees, and the university that creates the content is using those fees to serve the mission of the university as a whole—part of which is to make education, on and off campus, affordable.
What Campuses Can Learn From Online Teaching
The Federal Communications Commission called for public comment on Liberty Media’s application for approval to take control of Sirius XM Radio, a sign the agency is moving forward to evaluate the application. In a public notice issued on Oct 2, the FCC said that parties wishing to comment on Liberty's application need to submit them by Nov. 1 and responses or oppositions to comments must be filed by Nov. 20. After that, the FCC is expected to take several weeks to make a decision. The FCC said that it had decided to evaluate the application even though Sirius had not signed certain forms related to it. The two companies have been wrangling for months over Liberty's desire to exercise control of Sirius.
FCC Seeks Comment on Sirius, Liberty
When you are in a hole, you usually stop digging. And yet struggling T-Mobile USA, after failing to sell itself to AT&T, may be about to dig even deeper into the U.S. market: It is in talks to purchase prepaid mobile carrier MetroPCS PCS.
In many ways, it actually makes sense for T-Mobile's parent, Deutsche Telekom, to bulk up in the U.S. with the deal. It would eliminate a low-cost competitor and give the combined companies 29.5% of the prepaid market, according to Sanford C. Bernstein. Total subscribers would be 42.5 million, against 56 million for Sprint, 111 million for Verizon Wireless and 105 million for AT&T, as of the second quarter. If T-Mobile were to structure the deal as a reverse merger, as some analysts have suggested, it would give the company a U.S. stock listing. That would allow it to finance itself separately and let Deutsche Telekom sell down its exposure over time. MetroPCS's spectrum holdings are geographically complementary with T-Mobile's. And a deal would significantly bolster the latter's presence in the top 100 markets, as well as giving it crucial bandwidth to build a next-generation LTE network. One key opportunity is for T-Mobile to move subscribers off MetroPCS's network, which uses a different technology, and eventually to turn it off. That would both free up spectrum and allow the combined company to save money by merging cell sites, among other things. But it can be a painful process.
T-Mobile Redials America T-Mobile Would Still Rank No. 4 After ‘Shotgun Wedding’ (Bloomberg)
In February, the online advertising industry declared that it would agree to honor “Do Not Track” options in Web browsers by the end of the year– a reversal of its previous opposition to the anti-tracking effort. Now, that year-end goal – announced with much fanfare at the White House – is looking less likely. Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz said that the industry “appears to be backing off from its commitments.”
Chairman Leibowitz, who has been leading the crusade for a Do Not Track option in Web browsers, said he still hopes that an agreement can emerge from the Tracking Protection Working Group meeting in Amsterdam this week, where privacy advocates and advertisers are hammering out the details of a Do Not Track button for Web browsers. The sticking point is likely to be the industry’s definition of Do Not Track, which includes an exception for tracking related to market research and product development. Privacy advocates have pushed for limits on how long the industry can keep data for such purposes, and requirements that the data be anonymized after a certain date.
FTC Chairman: Advertisers Backing Away from ‘Do Not Track’ Pledge
Senate Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) is coming to the Federal Trade Commission's defense in the wake of criticism from some advertisers and GOP lawmakers over the agency's efforts to ensure consumers have a robust "do-not-track" option.
In a letter set to be delivered to FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, Chairman Rockefeller urged the commission to continue to work with the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, on developing standards for a do-not-track option. Leibowitz has been a strong proponent of giving consumers a choice of whether they want to be tracked online. Most major Internet browsers now include a do-not-track option. The W3C, a group that sets technical standards for the Web, has convened a working group that includes privacy advocates, advertisers, Internet browser makers, and others aimed at developing voluntary standards for how websites should respond to consumers' do-not-track choices. The group is meeting in Amsterdam this week to continue its work despite disagreement between privacy advocates and advertisers on how to proceed.
Chairman Rockefeller Backs FTC in Do-Not-Track Spat
The Federal Trade Commission has hired a prominent outside economist to assist with its antitrust investigation of Google in a sign it is prepping for a potential court fight with the company.
Rich Gilbert, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has been tapped by the FTC to serve as a key economist in the commission’s probe of whether Google’s business practices are anti-competitive. Gilbert joins Beth Wilkinson, the former Justice Department prosecutor who played a lead role in the conviction of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, as outside experts hired to help the FTC in the event it brings a case against Google. The hiring of an outside economist in an antitrust case as large and complex as the Google probe is common, experts say. But it’s also a clear sign that the FTC has escalated its antitrust investigation and is preparing in case it brings litigation against Google.
FTC hires economist in Google case
The Karl Rove-backed American Crossroads super PAC and Crossroads GPS non-profit group spent more than $20 million in late September on TV and radio ads attacking President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats.
The Crossroads ad buys are part of a wave of spending from conservative groups in the second half of September that swamped liberal outfits, a POLITICO analysis of federal data indicates. And they’re not slowing down. The two groups are about to launch a week-long advertising campaign in key battleground states worth $16 million. That includes $11 million on a spot focusing on the stimulus bill and the unemployment rate. Top-spending liberal organizations such as House Majority PAC and Priorities USA Action simply couldn’t compete last month, as has been the case for most of the 2012 campaign. Of the 10 groups spending the most in late September to directly support or oppose federal candidates, $47.4 million came from identifiably conservative entities while liberal groups spent $21.8 million, records show.
Crossroads groups swamp airwaves
Samsung has called for a new trial of its high-profile US patent case against Apple, suggesting the foreman of the jury which awarded the US group $1 billion in damages may have been biased by an undisclosed lawsuit of his own.
The South Korean company said Velvin Hogan, the San Jose jury foreman, did not tell the court before the trial that he was sued in 1993 for breach of contract by Seagate, the computer storage manufacturer in which Samsung now holds a significant stake. Hogan subsequently filed for personal bankruptcy. “Mr Hogan’s failure to disclose the Seagate suit raises issues of bias that Samsung should have been allowed to explore in questioning,” Samsung said in a filing.
Samsung asks for new Apple trial