Craig Aaron

[Commentary] The use of public airwaves has always come with public obligations. But nobody seems to be asking what the people are getting back in the deal. Whatever happened to “enlightenment of all the people”? Imagine if instead of cashing out, these station owners invested a significant portion of the auction revenue in a public fund to confront the crisis in journalism and support responsive local news, serious investigative reporting and public and community media of all kinds. What if they used the money to set up cutting-edge investigative newsrooms in cities across the country? Or built new tools to help the public sort through data and public records? Or leveraged it to support community-engagement efforts to attract and grow new and diverse audiences? What if we saw the auction as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reinvent public media and safeguard journalism’s future?

That’s how we see it at Free Press, and that’s why we’ve launched a new campaign — starting in New Jersey — to build the public pressure and political will needed to redirect and reinvest some of the spectrum-auction money to meet community-information needs.

[Craig Aaron is the president and CEO of Free Press and the Free Press Action Fund. ]

The Free Press Action Fund recently set out to determine which public TV stations are taking part in the Federal Communications Commission's broadcast incentive auction. First we noted which stations had already publicly announced their intention to participate or not. Then in July, we contacted by phone all auction eligible public broadcasters that had not yet publicized their plans. Here's what we found:

• 54 public TV stations confirmed that yes, they are participants in the auction.
• 87 public TV stations confirmed that no, they aren't participants in the auction.
• 40 stations refused to say whether they applied to participate.
• 104 stations didn't respond to the survey.

The participating stations the Free Press Action Fund identified are concentrated in 18 states and the District of Columbia. If they were to sell their spectrum at the maximum opening-bid prices, they would collectively stand to earn over $14 billion.

[Commentary] Donald Trump’s victory poses a serious and immediate threat to our friends and families, our loved ones and neighbors. We started Free Press to fight for your rights to connect and communicate — and that’s exactly what we intend to do. Here’s what we will do next:

Resist. We intend to be vigilant watchdogs in our corner of the world, exposing and disrupting any attempts to take away your freedoms or silence dissenting voices.
Rethink. We’re living with the results of the corporate media’s utter failure in 2016. Instead of accepting the status quo, we must reimagine and recreate a media that is more focused on serving communities than cozying up to power.
Rebuild. We’re committed to strengthening our organization to meet the challenges in front of us. That means bringing on more organizers and advocates, redoubling our commitment to racial equity, and networking with allied groups dedicated to transforming our democracy and society.

[Commentary] AT&T’s proposed buyout of Time Warner already has raised serious concerns from public interest groups and bipartisan lawmakers alike. “Too much concentration of power in the hands of too few,” says Donald Trump. “Less concentration, I think, is generally helpful, especially in the media,” says Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Sen Tim Kaine (D-VA). They have good reason to be worried.

This huge merger would put unprecedented media power — over the Internet, mobile phones, satellite TV, cable channels like CNN and HBO, movie studios and more — under one roof. If this mega merger goes through, AT&T will be saddled with more than $350 billion in total liabilities. What does that mean for subscribers? Higher monthly bills. That’s not idle speculation: It’s exactly what AT&T did after merging with DirecTV. Higher broadband prices will put essential Internet access further out of reach for too many families. Policymakers in Washington are starting to realize what the rest of us already knew: These media mega mergers don’t serve anyone besides Wall Street bankers and overpaid media execs awaiting their golden parachutes. There’s only one thing for the next administration to do: Block this deal.

[Craig Aaron is the president, and Dana Floberg is a policy fellow, at Free Press.]

[Commentary] This merger is ginormous. It would put the nation’s largest multichannel video provider (thanks to newly acquired DirecTV), the second-largest wireless company and the third-largest broadband provider under the same corporate umbrella as HBO, CNN, TBS, TNT and the Warner Bros. movie studio. Forget Ma Bell. This is Monster Bell.

AT&T Can’t Be Trusted: For years and through multiple merger proceedings, AT&T has promised to expand high-speed broadband and failed to deliver, only to resurrect the same promises when it’s ready to make another deal. AT&T’s list of lies and chicanery is too long to reprint here.

More Than Just a Merger: It’s important to recognize just how much the political landscape has shifted. There is deep popular distrust of the rigged system that AT&T/Time Warner represents and broad bipartisan frustration with the failure of merger after merger to deliver any public benefits.
Is there really enough popular and political will to stand up to AT&T’s lobbying juggernaut and block this deal? Stranger things have happened.

[Craig Aaron is the president and CEO of Free Press and the Free Press Action Fund]

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler wants you to calm down.

In a blog post on the FCC website, he claimed that the many critics of his plan are "misinformed." Does that mean that it's time for network neutrality fans to put down their pitchforks? Hell, no. It's time to get even louder.

Try as he might to convince people that he's on the right course, Chairman Wheeler doesn't seem to grasp one basic problem: Encouraging online discrimination in the name of the open Internet is unacceptable. Yet that's exactly what his plan would do: allow Internet service providers to charge new fees to content companies for preferential treatment.

If the chairman truly wants to do right by the Internet and avoid losing another costly court battle, reclassifying broadband is the only viable option. If Chairman Wheeler doesn't reclassify and continues down the wrong path, either the rules will be struck down when the FCC acts or, more likely, they'll never be enforced. And under the convoluted approach he's proposed, future FCC chairs who think differently than Chairman Wheeler does will be under zero obligation to take action.

Reclassification is the approach on the strongest legal footing. Reclassifying broadband is also the only approach that puts the needs of Internet users first. Innovators need the certainty that comes with common carriage, not Chairman Wheeler's "just trust me" approach to stopping harmful behavior by AT&T, Comcast or Verizon.

[Aaron is President and CEO, Free Press]

Tom Wheeler still doesn’t get it. People aren’t flooding his phone lines and filling his in-box because they’re confused about his proposal. They understand all too well that his plan would create a pay-to-prioritize Internet with fast lanes for the few.

There’s a better way to protect the public, and Chairman Wheeler’s excuses for not taking that path aren’t convincing anyone. If the chairman truly wants to do right by the Internet and avoid losing another costly court battle, he should follow the letter of the Communications Act, exercise the FCC’s clear authority and reclassify Internet service providers as common carriers. It’s not only the most sensible and courageous approach, it’s also the quickest way to bring a final resolution to this issue. And it’s the only approach that puts the needs of Internet users first.

The future of the open Internet can’t rest on the supposed good intentions of one chairman. Internet users and innovators need the certainty that comes with common carriage, not Wheeler’s ‘just trust me’ approach to stopping harmful behavior from providers. Chairman Wheeler needs to realize that the push for reclassification is about much more than Net Neutrality. Title II isn’t something that he holds in his back pocket to use at a later date. It’s the law Congress intended to apply to these vital services, so that users would be free to communicate without unjust online discrimination.

[Commentary] Comcast took to Washington to sell its mega-merger with Time Warner Cable. But in a week that Comcast had hoped to parade the proposed merger past Congress and regulators it quickly became clear that the cable giant couldn't make the case.

Every step of the way, they were asked by skeptical lawmakers to explain how, exactly, this merger would benefit the public. Apparently, the answer is better DVRs. And that's about all we get for letting the No. 1 cable company swallow up No. 2. If this merger goes through, Comcast's service area will cover almost two-thirds of the United States.

On day one, Comcast will control nearly 50 percent of the truly high-speed Internet market, and it will be the only broadband provider that can deliver Internet and pay-TV services to nearly four out of every 10 US homes. Judging by the hearing, the Senate wasn't buying what Comcast was selling -- and neither is the public.

Will an outraged public be able to counteract Comcast's lobbying onslaught? Can organized people beat organized money? Well, it's the only thing that ever has.

[Aaron is President and CEO, Free Press]