Washington Post

Soon-to-be House Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) and Rep John Yarmuth (R-KY) want to repeal a long-standing ban on media consolidation, calling it a “disco era” rule that prevents struggling local media outlets from surviving in an increasingly-competitive market for information. Their legislation takes aim at a 41-year-old rule that prohibits a company from owning both a newspaper and a radio or television station in the same market. Critics of media ownership consolidation have included President-elect Donald Trump, who during his campaign lashed out at the proposed deal to combine AT&T with media titan Time Warner. Repealing the media ownership ban is necessary to help smaller voices stay economically competitive, according to proponents.

But critics of consolidation, such as Trump, have worried that the trend could lead to the crowding out of conservative voices. Trump's previously stated opposition to media consolidation raises questions about his position on the bill from Reps Walden and Yarmuth. Although the media cross-ownership ban applies only to ownership of newspapers and broadcast media, not cable, the walls that have traditionally divided these companies into silos are rapidly collapsing.

Donald Trump ran one of the most unorthodox -- and successful -- political campaigns in modern history. One aspect of the campaign that hasn't received much attention is the Trump ad strategy: How did the Trump media team sell one of the best known and least traditional candidates in history to a skeptical public? GOP media consultant Larry Weitzner was at the center of that effort. The CEO of GOP ad firm Jamestown Associates, Weitzner crafted the Trump TV message.

[Commentary] There are an estimated 1.5 trillion objects around the world that could one day connect to the Internet, everything from simple housewares to automobiles. In the so-called Internet of Things, each of them will be capable of sending and receiving data just as our laptops, smartphones, tablets and TVs do today. But if Internet-connected wearables or smart home devices didn’t make your holiday shopping list this year, it may be because of growing concerns about how careless the makers seem to be with the data their devices collect.

If IoT manufacturers and programmers don’t collectively get their act together, they may find themselves forced to work with a one-size-fits-none set of rules passed and enforced at the leisurely pace of governments. That will surely slow already sluggish consumer adoption, and raise even more anxiety among potential IoT users.

[Larry Downes is a project director at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy]

On a sweltering day this summer, a handful of protesters gathered outside an AMC movie theater in Times Square, holding red signs proclaiming “AMC = American Movie Communists.” They were opposing the giant movie theater company AMC’s $1.2 billion purchase of a rival cinema chain, Carmike, that has theaters in 41 states. The deal, which is still subject to government approval, would make AMC the largest theater chain in the US. The protesters targeted AMC's Chinese owners — the sprawling Chinese real estate and entertainment company called Dalian Wanda that acquired the American movie chain in 2002, creating the world's largest theater empire. The protest suggested the Carmike acquisition would further extend Beijing’s hidden control over American mass media. But the protesters had not gathered on their own volition. They were being paid to be there by a Washington lobbying firm, Berman and Company, waging a war against Chinese acquisitions of American movie theaters.

[Commentary] I’m not going to sugarcoat this: For policy experts, the next four years of the Trump Administration will be a waking nightmare. This is for two reasons. The first is that President-elect Donald Trump’s team has few if any policy wonks. The second is that this puts the average policy wonk in a no-win situation.

But, what if the Trump Administration turns out to be pretty good at governing? Trump has spent the past year and a half defying most political experts and winning the greatest natural experiment in American political history. What if he and his team prove to be better at governing than wonks expect him to be? What if it turns out that the country is already trending in a very positive direction and even the federal government can’t screw that up? Or what if disruption by inexperienced policy principals is just what the bureaucracy needs?

[Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University]

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen retired Marine Gen. James N. Mattis to be secretary of defense, apparently, nominating a former senior military officer who led operations across the Middle East to run the Pentagon less than four years after he hung up his uniform. To take the job, Mattis will need Congress to pass new legislation to bypass a federal law stating that defense secretaries must not have been on active duty in the previous seven years. Congress has granted a similar exception just once, when Gen. George C. Marshall was appointed to the job in 1950.

[Commentary] How will the Trump Administration regulate the Internet? The truth is that nobody really knows. With virtually nothing to go on, speculation about the new Administration’s approach to technology (and there has been a lot of it) is mostly just hot air rushing to fill a vacuum. So perhaps the better question to ask is: How should the new Administration approach digital innovation? The short answer: cautiously.

As the Trump Administration belatedly prepares its technology policy, the best Silicon Valley and its customers worldwide can hope for is a recognition that slow-moving regulators, even with the best of intentions, can do very little good trying to shape a digital revolution already in progress. As new interns are told on their first day in the emergency room, “Don’t just do something. Stand there.”

[Larry Downes is a project director at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy]

[Commentary] It’s official: Refusing to meet the press is in. President-elect Donald Trump has gone ages without a news conference. And now, CBS’ Glenn Geller, ABC’s Channing Dungey, Fox’s Gary Newman and Dana Walden and NBC’s Bob Greenblatt — the people in charge of programming at these networks — have announced that they won’t hold news conferences for reporters and critics at the Television Critics Association press tour in January.

They claim they want critics to focus on the new series they’ll be presenting and promise that they’ll reinstate the sessions this summer. Amazon and Netflix won’t be presenting either new content or making executives available either. The press tour, which happens twice a year in January and July, is one of the few opportunities for reporters from all over the country to meet with the people who make television, and the people who decide what television gets made.

Seven weeks before taking the oath of office, President-elect Donald Trump spent part of his night retweeting angry messages about CNN's coverage of his bogus voter fraud claims — including one tweet from a teenager — then continued the tirade into the morning of Nov 29. The tweetstorm came one week after President-elect Trump met with a group of TV executives and journalists, including CNN President Jeff Zucker, in a session that attendees expected to be part of a peacemaking effort but which turned out to be an airing of grievances against the media. With his latest spray of complaints, President-elect Trump has once again shattered any notion that he will tone down his anti-press rhetoric. This is the approach that got him elected, of course. Still, it's hard to see what an incoming president stands to gain by engaging in the kind of social media trolling most often associated with teenage boys — and inviting the comparison by literally quoting a teenage boy.

Seven weeks before taking the oath of office, President-elect Donald Trump spent part of his night retweeting angry messages about CNN's coverage of his bogus voter fraud claims — including one tweet from a teenager — then continued the tirade into the morning of Nov 29. The tweetstorm came one week after President-elect Trump met with a group of TV executives and journalists, including CNN President Jeff Zucker, in a session that attendees expected to be part of a peacemaking effort but which turned out to be an airing of grievances against the media. With his latest spray of complaints, President-elect Trump has once again shattered any notion that he will tone down his anti-press rhetoric. This is the approach that got him elected, of course. Still, it's hard to see what an incoming president stands to gain by engaging in the kind of social media trolling most often associated with teenage boys — and inviting the comparison by literally quoting a teenage boy.