Government & Communications

This report introduces students to the field of civic technology and the possibility that it could help to amplify citizen engagement. Rather than providing an exhaustive academic study of this topic or an in-depth exploration of a single organization, the case begins with a broad overview of the field (and several of the debates affecting it) and then contains a series of vignettes about three organizations in this space: the City of Chicago, Neighborly, and the City of Boston’s Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics. It aims to stimulate discussion around three core questions.

• First, what is civic technology, and what are some of the core forces, tensions, and debates shaping the field?
• Second, what are some of the most important considerations for civic technology organizations that are aiming to engage citizens in the democratic process and governmental decision-making?
• Third, where does civic technology—and, along with it, our conceptions of citizenship and engagement—go from here?

On July 26, I received a phone call from Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director. He wasn’t happy. Earlier in the night, I’d tweeted, citing a “senior White House official,” that Scaramucci was having dinner at the White House with President Trump, the First Lady, Sean Hannity, and the former Fox News executive Bill Shine. It was an interesting group, and raised some questions. Was Trump getting strategic advice from Hannity? Was he considering hiring Shine? But Scaramucci had his own question—for me. “Who leaked that to you?” he asked. I said I couldn’t give him that information. He responded by threatening to fire the entire White House communications staff. “What I’m going to do is, I will eliminate everyone in the comms team and we’ll start over,” he said. I laughed, not sure if he really believed that such a threat would convince a journalist to reveal a source. He continued to press me and complain about the staff he’s inherited in his new job. “I ask these guys not to leak anything and they can’t help themselves,” he said. “You’re an American citizen, this is a major catastrophe for the American country. So I’m asking you as an American patriot to give me a sense of who leaked it.” In Scaramucci’s view, the fact that word of the dinner had reached a reporter was evidence that his rivals in the West Wing, particularly Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, were plotting against him.

President Donald Trump’s voting commission, given a judge’s approval to resume seeking voter data, has issued another request asking states for information and vowing to keep the details confidential. The voting panel has come under intense scrutiny and faced a wave of lawsuits since making a sweeping request in June for reams of “publicly-available voter roll data,” including names, addresses, dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers. State leaders from both parties have expressed privacy concerns about potentially revealing personal information, while some officials and voting experts also have pushed back against the commission, which was formed by Trump after he repeatedly claimed — without evidence — that widespread voter fraud cost him the popular vote in last year’s presidential election.

In an arrangement prominent ethics experts say is without precedent and potentially illegal, the White House is referring questions for senior presidential adviser Stephen K. Bannon to an outside public relations agent whose firm says she is working for free. Alexandra Preate, a 46-year-old New Yorker and veteran Republican media strategist, describes herself as Bannon's "personal spokesperson." But she also collaborates with other White House officials on public messaging and responses to press inquiries. It was Preate who responded when the Center for Public Integrity recently asked the White House Press Office questions about Bannon. Preate, however, is not employed by President Donald Trump’s administration or paid by the federal government.

The unorthodox setup means Bannon, Trump's chief strategist, is potentially violating the Antideficiency Act, which provides that federal employees "may not accept voluntary services for [the] government or employ personal services exceeding that authorized by law." The revelations about Preate's work are the latest controversy to embroil the White House Communications Office, which is reeling from a series of high-profile resignations, firings and leadership changes in recent days.

[Commentary] For more than a year now, Donald Trump — first as a candidate, then as president — has made a war against the press a central plank of his public persona. He has singled out individual journalists for ad hominem attacks and declared entire news organizations to be working against America’s interests.

The lack of trust that now exists between the press and the public didn’t start with Trump, though he certainly has done his part to exacerbate it. It has been building slowly for decades, to the point that the conversation between the media and its readers is broken. Many Americans no longer think the press listens to or understands them, and they long ago started tuning us out. We became part of the establishment that had turned its back on them. These are our failings, and they need to be fixed. Reporters should be focused on the president’s team and his policies, examining his remaking of American government. These are the stories that resonate with Americans, not his views about what’s airing on MSNBC or CNN some Monday morning. We are already seeing some excellent reporting in this vein. We need more.

[Kyle Pope is editor and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review.]

Sarah Palin’s legal team plans to subpoena 23 current and former staff members of The New York Times, including writers and editors, for a defamation lawsuit, according to court papers filed in a federal district court in Manhattan on July 26. The legal team will demand the newspaper turn over "every internal communication it has had about the former vice presidential candidate since 2011." Palin filed the suit against the Times in June, alleging defamation. The case concerns an opinion piece written by the paper's editorial board that directly linked the 2011 shooting of Rep Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) to a political ad publicized by Palin. The ad put Democratic districts up for reelection in a logo symbolizing crosshairs. The court filing shows Palin claiming the newspaper wrongly accused her of "inciting a mass shooting at a political event in January 2011.

[Commentary] President Donald Trump and his loyalists potentially find the release of nearly any information about what they’re doing to be offensive, no matter how mundane. Often this is couched in the use of the word “leaks.” There are real leaks in the White House, and information has been provided to the news media that is unusually sensitive in nature. There are also more anodyne leaks of the palace-intrigue variety. And then there are things that are called leaks but which aren’t. President Trump and his core allies want you to know only what President Trump wants you to know. Everything else is leaks or “fake news.” Or, somehow, both.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer had settled it when he said President Trump's tweets “are considered official statements by the president of the United States.” But Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) doesn't agree. In an interview about Trump's (Twitter-driven) attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Rep Stewart said this: “I quit reading the president's tweets quite a long time ago. I don’t pay that much attention to them, and I'd recommend other people not pay a whole lot of attention to it because I don’t think it's policy.” And House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said, "I don't read that stuff."

A poll from The Economist/YouGov asked Americans whether they would support “permitting the courts to shut down news media outlets for publishing or broadcasting stories that are biased or inaccurate.” The results were scary for anyone concerned about the future of American democracy.

According to the poll, Americans are roughly evenly divided on whether the US government should have the power to shut down unfriendly media outlets: 28 percent favor, 29 percent oppose, and 43 percent are unsure. But the results become really striking when you break them down by partisan identification: A fairly large plurality of Republicans — 45 percent — support allowing media organizations to be shuttered. A scant 20 percent oppose the idea; that’s less than half the number who support it. The remaining 35 percent of Republicans have not made up their minds.

The good news: Cameras were allowed to record July 26’s White House briefing. The bad news: They didn’t have a whole lot to record.

The crew of White House correspondents had a number of questions about the new White House policy on the service of transgender Americans in the military — a policy that President Donald Trump announced on twitter. Of course, any policy change announced via three tweets invites questions, owing to the fact that 420 characters leave only so much room for details. But the back and forth at the briefing did not go well. The questions were about a proactive White House policy announced directly by the President of the United States. Accordingly, the White House press secretary should be brimming with facts and perspectives and talking points. Or at least an answer as to what happens to current transgender service members. That she sounded like a besieged PR type speaks to a matter of continuity in the Trump White House: Though a new communications director — Anthony Scaramucci — took over recently, Trump’s spokespeople appear to be no better briefed on the issues of the day than they’ve been over the past six months.

The dearth of information coming from the podium will prompt cries — again — that the briefings are useless. Not true. They show that White House officials are as clueless about the outside world as they are about what’s going on inside the building.