Hill, The

The Trump administration will continue to use the term "fake news" to push back on what Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to President Trump, described as media outlets' "monumental desire" to "attack a duly elected president." "There is a monumental desire on behalf of the majority of the media — not just the pollsters — the majority of the media to attack a duly elected president in the second week of his term," Gorka said. "That's how unhealthy the situation is, and until the media understands how wrong that attitude is, and how it hurts their credibility, we are going to continue to say 'fake news.' " The president and senior members of the administration have dubbed national outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN as "fake news" in critiques both before and after the Jan. 20 inauguration.

Rep Mo Brooks (R-AL) took to the House floor Feb 7 to dismiss a Washington Post fact check about his claims of voter fraud as a “fake news hit piece.” Leaked tapes from the GOP retreat in Philadelphia in Jan that were given to the Post revealed Rep Brooks discussing voter fraud with Vice President Mike Pence. “In my first election in 1982, Democrats rigged about 25 percent of the voting machines to vote for everyone on the ballot but me. That’s 11 of 45 machines. The whole state was Democrat. Nothing was done to fix it,” Rep Brooks said during the private discussion. The Post conducted a fact check of Rep Brooks’s claims, but could not find any evidence to substantiate the charges.

The Post awarded Brooks its maximum of four Pinocchios, reserved for what it considers “whoppers.” Rep Brooks didn’t offer any additional evidence during his House floor speech. But he maintained the 11 machines failing to register votes for him statistically suggested some intentional foul play. “I proudly wear the Washington Post’s Four Pinocchios like a red badge of courage,” Rep Brooks declared.

[Commentary] The most modern part of America’s economy – communications – suffers under America’s most out-of-date law and most backward-looking regulation. In the absence of Congress passing a modern communications law for the 21st century, it can be hard to see what a modern Federal Communications Commission would or should look like.

As the new FCC, led by Republican Chairman Ajit Pai, organizes and focuses on how to legitimately mitigate and reverse the previous FCC’s most retrograde technology-driven regulations, it is much easier to know what is not a modern FCC.

[Scott Cleland is president of Precursor LLC and chairman of NetCompetition]

Rep Jim Jordan (R-OH) argued that the media is trying to undermine President Donald Trump and his recent executive orders. “Does the media have a bias? And is the media out to make sure that they can undermine some of the things that the president is doing? I think that’s pretty clear,” Rep Jordan told CNN’s “New Day.”

CNN host Chris Cuomo pressed Rep Jordan over President Trump’s recent claim that the media does not cover terrorist attacks, a statement Cuomo said “is demonstrably false.” “I’ll take your word for it that you didn’t underreport that. You actually reported some of those,” Rep Jordan said. “All. All is the word you’re looking for,” Cuomo replied.

[Commentary] As one of his first actions in office, President Trump selected Ajit Pai to be the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. It was a phenomenal choice. Chairman Pai is a “lawyer’s lawyer” with significant experience in the field and, as such, is one of the most qualified persons ever to hold the post in recent memory. It is wonderful to see that hard work, expertise, and merit still matter in American politics.

The incoming chairman certainly has a lot on his plate. I would submit that among Chairman Pai’s most pressing concerns must be to repair the commission’s tattered reputation as an expert agency worthy of public trust. Pai’s predecessor, Democrat Tom Wheeler, had no regard for due process and no reluctance to lie to the American people to achieve political outcomes. As a result, there are growing calls to curtail—if not outright abolish—the FCC and to transfer those responsibilities to the Federal Trade Commission and other federal agencies. While changing market conditions warrant serious contemplation about the nature and scope of FCC oversight, it is also important that we not throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water simply because the Obama administration cavalierly abused the public trust.

[Lawrence Spiwak is the President of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies]

Fake news did not change the result 2016 presidential election, according to a study by researchers at Stanford and New York University. The study shows that fake news stories favorable to Republican nominee Donald Trump far outnumbered similar stories about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. But only 8 percent of voters actually read those stories, and even fewer recall or believed what they were reading, researchers said. Favorable but fake Trump news was shared 30 million times on Facebook during the campaign, while fake pro-Clinton news was shared about 7 million times.

"Our data suggest that social media were not the most important source of election news and even the most widely circulated news stories were seen by only a small fraction of Americans,” lead researchers Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow wrote. In order for fake news to have a real effect on the election, it would have had to have been as persuasive as 36 television ads, the study concludes. Fake news became so prominent in 2016, Politifact named it "the lie of the year," a dubious award usually reserved for humans. "Because of its powerful symbolism in an election year filled with rampant and outrageous lying — PolitiFact is naming Fake News the 2016 'winner.'”

[Commentary] With distance from the 2016 presidential and Congressional races, we are beginning to gain perspective on the challenges that lie ahead, including the cybersecurity of our nation’s critical infrastructure. We propose three actions that address the critical cyber vulnerabilities our nation faces:
1) Honestly evaluate our strengths and weaknesses
2) Empower the private sector
3) Facilitate continuous information-sharing
Like Eisenhower’s push to create the interstate highway system, which both fueled innovation and provided new national security capabilities, today’s cyberspace underpins everything from our nation’s energy transmission and national defense, to our individual citizens’ financial and physical wellbeing. In a world where organized crime and adversarial nation-states may have all-too-easy access to our nuclear plants or our patients’ pacemakers, we must foster the public/private partnerships that keep America one step ahead.

[Robert Lord is a fellow at the Institute of Critical Infrastructure Technology, a next-generation cybersecurity think tank. David Mussington is a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and is also the Director, Center for Public Policy and Private Enterprise, University of Maryland.]

President Donald Trump vowed to "destroy" the Johnson Amendment, which prevents religious groups and churches from engaging in political activities. "I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution," the president said Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast. "I will do that, remember." The president added that freedom of a religion is a "sacred right," but that it is also "under threat." "And the world is under serious, serious threat, in so many different ways and I've never seen it so much and so openly," he said. "The world is in trouble, we're going to straighten is out." The Johnson Amendment prohibits churches and other tax-exempt organizations from endorsing political candidates. Repealing the amendment would allow religious organizations to engage in partisan political activities without losing their tax exemption status.

Kellyanne Conway said that violent protests at the University of California, Berkeley, are the latest example of unrest partially fueled by the media. UC Berkeley initiated a campuswide lockdown Feb 1 after demonstrations broke out against a scheduled speech there by Breitbart senior editor Milo Yiannopoulos. “What’s going on out there is what’s going on all across the country,” said Conway. “You have protesters who feel very emboldened,” added Conway, who served as Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign manager. "They’ve got media cameras following them; they give interviews. I don’t even know if they know what they’re protesting. Really, what is it, the free speech? Having someone on your campus who has a dissenting point of view or wants to present an alternative point of view?”

The Federal Communications Commission announced that it would unveil "significant process reform," February 2. The measure is supposed to improve the transparency of FCC rulemakings. There will not be a livestream so if you want the details on this one you're going have to bring your popcorn out to the FCC's headquarters.