Free Press

In 2016, Free Press released Digital Denied, which showed that disparities in broadband adoption — commonly known as the digital divide —stem not only from income inequality, but from systemic racial discrimination. The report found that nearly half of all people in the country without home-internet access were people of color. Much of that gap was indeed the result of income inequality.

Our 2019 policy priorities lay out a proactive agenda for the new year and the new Congress, to move us closer to building media and communications systems that empower everyone to connect and communicate freely and safely. We’ve identified four major priorities:

In recent days, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai ordered his agency to investigate telecommunication carriers’ slow response in restoring service to the Florida Panhandle, which Hurricane Michael struck on Oct 10. Free Press applauds Chairman Pai for holding telecom companies accountable in this instance. But Chairman Pai failed to show the same urgency in the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, which struck Puerto Rico in 2017 and left nearly the entire population without phone and broadband service.

A coalition of Puerto Rican advocates, racial- and social-justice organizations, and media and telecommunications experts urged Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to appoint an independent commission to examine the causes for the communications failures in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in 2017. In a letter delivered to Chairman Pai on the one-year anniversary of the storm making landfall in Puerto Rico, groups including the Center for Media Justice, Color Of Change, Collective Action for Puerto Rico, Defend Puerto Rico, Free Press, the National Hispanic Media Coalit