Washington Post

[Commentary] In the wake of a growing conflict between President Trump and the news media, many have expressed concern about what this spells for the future of democracy in America. Although the president has not proposed formal legislation restricting the media, he has, for example, called media organizations “the enemy of the American people” and has excluded prominent organizations from news briefings. Although Trump’s conflict with the media has alarmed many in the United States, such a confrontation is not unusual when we look outside our borders. There have been many such conflicts in other countries.

Our study of dozens of these cases leads to a disturbing conclusion: Media restrictions abroad are a bellwether for declines in democracy and for periods of increased human rights abuse. Trump’s current and past behavior suggests that he would like to increase the social, economic and perhaps legal costs to the media for criticizing the government. Our analysis suggests that democratic institutions are more likely to weaken when the government restricts the media than when it does not. Democracy can often survive regardless, but there is still good reason to monitor the attacks on the institutions that sustain it.

[Daniel W. Hill Jr. is an assistant professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia. Yonatan Lupu is an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University.]

Rep James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-WI) told a town hall attendee who was concerned about the elimination of online privacy protections that using the Internet is a choice — a statement that has since drawn criticism on social media. During the meeting in Wisconsin, the attendee asked about the recent decision by Congress to wipe away an Obama-era policy that sought to limit what Internet service providers, such as Verizon, AT&T and Comcast, can do with customers’ Internet browsing history. The concern is similar to one raised by consumer activists: Not all Internet users have options to switch to a different company if they don’t agree with their current provider’s privacy practices. “Facebook is not comparable to an ISP. I do not have to go to Facebook,” the town hall attendee told Rep Sensenbrenner Jr. “I do have one provider. … I have one choice. I don’t have to go on Google. My ISP provider is different than those providers.”

In response, Sensenbrenner, who voted to scrap the Federal Communications Commission’s privacy rules that were set to take effect at the end of this year, said: “Nobody’s got to use the Internet. … And the thing is that if you start regulating the Internet like a utility, if we did that right at the beginning, we would have no Internet. … Internet companies have invested an awful lot of money in having almost universal service now. The fact is is that, you know, I don’t think it’s my job to tell you that you cannot get advertising for your information being sold. My job, I think, is to tell you that you have the opportunity to do it, and then you take it upon yourself to make that choice. … That’s what the law has been, and I think we ought to have more choices rather than fewer choices with the government controlling our everyday lives.” The congressman then moved on to the next question.

[Commentary] Google and Facebook are facing new competition to their online business models after President Trump signed a bill putting Internet service providers on a path to being able to monetize online users the same way these technology giants do. Next up is the threatened unwinding of the Obama administration’s “net neutrality” rules, which could put these companies in a double bind, because they could soon have to pay Internet service providers a metered rate to move their content to customers’ screens. Google and Facebook will argue — as they did during our fight on net neutrality in 2015 — that ISPs should not be able to prioritize and price the flow of online content. The problem is that they make the exact opposite argument in their role as distributors of news content crucial to our democracy. The two digital giants increase or reduce users’ exposure to news content based on whether publishers — such as the Wall Street Journal or the Indianapolis Star — agree to play by their rules. Those rules are crafted to maximize the flow of advertising revenue, not quality content.

[Chavern is president and chief executive of the News Media Alliance, a trade association representing about 2,000 newspapers in the United States and Canada]

A recent tweet from the Associated Press indicates it learned of a meeting between Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian President Vladimir Putin not from Tillerson's team but from Putin's. What's more, after allowing US journalists to accompany him to the Osobnyak Guest House in Moscow for a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Tillerson ditched reporters before meeting Putin at the Kremlin. Throughout the day, Russia drove US media coverage by pushing out a steady stream of information (or disinformation) that the State Department was slow to match.

Using Skype, the video-call app, the White House has extended the daily question-and-answer sessions for the first time to people in far-flung locales. The innovation, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, “has been very successful bringing in additional reporters beyond the Beltway.” Except that many of the people who have occupied the “Skype seat” aren’t reporters at all.

Many have been conservative talk-show hosts who are receptive to, or openly cheering for, Trump’s agenda. Since Spicer initiated the calls, he has taken questions from the likes of nationally syndicated radio personalities and regional hosts. The newbies have made little attempt to conceal their points of view, their enthusiasm for President Donald Trump or simply their contempt for the news media.

The FBI obtained a secret court order in 2016 to monitor the communications of an adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other US officials said.

The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page’s communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials. This is the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch with Russian agents. Such contacts are now at the center of an investigation into whether the campaign coordinated with the Russian government to swing the election in Trump’s favor.

The legal battle between Twitter and the US government ended April 7, after the Department of Homeland Security withdrew its demand that the tech company release information to identify an account holder whose tweets are critical of President Donald Trump on Twitter. The lawsuit threatened to become a major battle over free speech between Silicon Valley and Washington. But it was over almost before it began. The tech company had filed a lawsuit April 6 to protest the order, saying that it violated the user's First Amendment right to free expression. But Twitter dropped its suit the next day, saying in a court filing that "[because] the summons has now been withdrawn, Twitter voluntary dismisses without prejudice all claims."

Democratic Sens successfully blocked Judge Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation to the US Supreme Court from advancing in the US Senate on April 6, sparking a bitter clash with Republicans over how the chamber confirms high court nominees. By a vote of 55 to 45, Gorsuch failed to earn the 60 votes needed to end debate on his nomination. In response, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has vowed he will change Senate rules in order to confirm Gorsuch and all future Supreme Court nominees with a simple majority vote.

A final confirmation vote on Gorsuch is not scheduled until April 7, when 52 Republicans and at least three Democrats — from states won by Trump in 2016’s election — are expected to vote for him to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the high court. But the next 24 hours could be among the most contentious in recent Senate history. “This will be the first and last partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nomination,” McConnell vowed April 6.

President Donald Trump recently signed a congressional resolution completing the repeal of broadband privacy rules announced by the Obama-era Federal Communications Commission. According to news reports, the purpose of the repeal was to allow broadband Internet service providers to conduct the same sort of monitoring of user online activities, such as Web-surfing habits, that companies like Google and Facebook can conduct. I don’t know much about communications law or the proposed regulations. But the description of what the repeal was designed to do made me wonder: Isn’t that kind of monitoring mostly illegal under the Wiretap Act?

As I see it, the Wiretap Act substantially limits what kinds of surveillance broadband providers can conduct even without the Obama-era rules. Given that, it’s not clear to me how much the repeal actually matters. I have been told that [the arguments I described] never entered the debate over the FCC regulations because communications lawyers just don’t think about the Wiretap Act. The Wiretap Act is a criminal statute in Title 18, and it’s just something off the radar screen of lawyers who practice communications law. If so, that should change. Depending on what the broadband providers want to do, the Wiretap Act may be a serious bar to the companies doing it legally. And given the hammer of statutory damages that the Wiretap Act allows, a mistake that implicates the Wiretap Act might end up as a very costly mistake.

Comcast leapt into the cutthroat market for cellphone service by unveiling Xfinity Mobile, a move that other cable companies are expected to follow as consumers' rising Internet consumption increasingly pits providers of home and mobile broadband against each other. The company will offer its Xfinity customers two wireless options: one for unlimited data that costs from $45 to $65 per line a month, and a pay-as-you-go plan for $12 per gigabyte. The service will be available to customers starting in the second quarter, Comcast said.

The new offering is aimed at helping Comcast compete outside the home as Americans' Internet usage increasingly shifts to mobile devices. The cable company's service relies primarily on Comcast's network of 16 million public Wi-Fi hotspots for connectivity, allowing users to surf the Web, watch video and listen to streaming music on their phones without paying for cellular data. Where the company's WiFi signals are unavailable, Xfinity Mobile will connect to the traditional cellular network owned by Verizon, which Comcast is using as a result of an airwaves agreement signed several years ago.