July 31, 2012 (Olympics coverage by NBC News questioned)

BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for TUESDAY, JULY 31, 2012

Spectrum and Online Public Inspection Files on today’s agenda http://benton.org/calendar/2012-07-31/

MEDIA AND THE OLYMPICS
   Journalist at The Independent has Twitter account suspended after complaining about NBC's coverage of London 2012 Olympics
   Fans asked to tweet from Olympics only if it's 'urgent'
   Olympics coverage by NBC News questioned
   Olympic Viewers Have a New Reason to Complain, and the Means to Do It
   Olympic Hurdle: Using Social Media [links to web]
   In Defense of NBC: There Are Two Olympics - analysis
   Olympics 2012: From birds to broadband
   Beyond first, second, or third: London 2012 by the numbers [links to web]
   So far, even the Olympics can’t budge our outdated TV models - analysis

JOURNALISM
   Senate's Top Republican Hails The Fall Of Old Media
   Digital goes first at the FT
   Ford Foundation gives Washington Post $500,000 grant for government-accountability reporting [links to web]

MEDIA AND ELECTIONS
Obama Campaign Pays Lower Olympic Rates Than RNC

INTERNET/BROADBAND
   Want Gigabit Internet? You Don’t Have to Move to Kansas City. - analysis
   In Nashville, once over limit, Comcast will charge $10 per 50 GB [links to web]
   Sales Taxes and Internet Commerce - research [links to web]

TELEVISION
Pay TV model won’t die anytime soon, analyst says
Disney Finds a Cure for the Common Stereotype With ‘Doc McStuffins’

CONTENT
   Disney Finds a Cure for the Common Stereotype With ‘Doc McStuffins’
   Social Media Are Giving a Voice to Taste Buds
   Digital goes first at the FT
   YouTube to Double Down on Its 'Channel' Experiment [links to web]
   E-Reading: A Midterm Progress Report - analysis [links to web]

SPECTRUM/WIRELESS
   Maryland senators concerned about Verizon-cable deal
   Verizon helps U.S. rule global LTE market with half of all connections [links to web]
   T-Mobile defends Verizon spectrum swap as way to enhance LTE network [links to web]

AGENDA
Time to Adopt New Telecommunications Act - editorial

POLICYMAKERS
Ajit Pai helps boost conservatives in FCC
Michael Copps to Lead Common Cause Media and Democracy Initiative - press release

COMPANY NEWS
   Google and Facebook's new tactic in the tech wars - analysis
   FTC OK With Disney Purchase of NBCU's A+E Stake [links to web]
   Google's Apology for Not Deleting Street View Data Isn't Enough [links to web]
   The unspoken truth about Apple [links to web]
   Amazon's recommendation secret [links to web]

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MEDIA AND THE OLYMPICS

NBC’S TWITTER ACCOUNT SUSPENDED
[SOURCE: The Independent, AUTHOR: Guy Adams]
[Commentary] On July 27, I was not watching the Olympic opening ceremony. Instead, I was quietly fuming at the fact that NBC, the US network which purchased rights to the entire Games, had come to the conclusion that it would be a good idea delay broadcast of this global news event until the evening prime-time, roughly nine hours after it had finished. This being the era of Twitter, I did not have to suffer in silence. At around 2pm, I began posting a series of messages complaining about the company’s hugely-cynical policy. One of them suggested that frustrated viewers voice their complaints to Gary Zenkel, the President of NBC Olympics. “The man responsible for NBC pretending the Olympics haven't started yet is Gary Zenkel,” read the Tweet. “Tell him what u think!” It then contained Zenkel’s work email address. A few dozen people “re-Tweeted” the update over the ensuing hours. Several of them used the “hashtag” #NBCFail, which, thanks to the broadcaster’s comically inept coverage of the London games, has since been a trending topic on the microblogging site. Later that afternoon, I was invited on the Los Angeles talk radio station KNX 1070 to discuss the absence of live coverage of the ceremony. If I remember correctly, I declared myself “utterly outraged” during that two-minute interview, saying with only a hint of understatement that NBC was: “treating the people of America with contempt.” On July 29, I wrote a short article for The Independent growing criticism of NBC’s Olympics coverage, which has resulted in network TV viewers being shown almost no high profile events live, while commentators made a series of basic factual errors – among them, calling Luxembourg "a small, central European country.” Shortly after filing that article, I attempted to check my Twitter account. When I logged on, I was presented with a message saying it had been “suspended.” If I had any questions, I was asked to click on a link and fill in an online form. I heard back from Twitter. In what was apparently an automated email, I was told that: “Your twitter account has been suspended for posting an individual's private information such as private email address.” It then contained a copy of my Tweet regarding Zenkel.
benton.org/node/131031 | Independent, The | GigaOm
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FANS ASKED TO TWEET FROM OLYMPICS ONLY IF IT'S 'URGENT'
[SOURCE: CNN, AUTHOR: John Sutter]
This is supposed to be the Twitter Olympics, but tweet- and text-clogged networks appear to have caused problems for broadcasters at the London Games. Broadcasters complained over the weekend that they were unable to determine the distance between cyclists in Saturday's road races because GPS and communications systems had failed. A spokesman blamed the problems on overuse of Twitter and text messages. "From my understanding, One network was oversubscribed, and OBS (the Olympic Broadcasting Service) are trying to spread the load to other providers," Mark Adams, a spokesman for the International Olympic Committee, was quoted by The Guardian as saying. "We don't want to stop people engaging in this by social media," he added, "but perhaps they might consider only sending urgent updates."
benton.org/node/131034 | CNN
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OLYMPICS COVERAGE
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Paul Farhi]
To cover this summer’s Olympic Games, NBC News will deploy a journalistic force of some 450 people, including 25 reporters and its lead anchorman, Brian Williams. The network has been featuring Olympic updates on the Williams-anchored “Nightly News” and softer stories every morning on the “Today” show for weeks. By contrast, ESPN, the 24-hour sports network, has sent just two reporters to London, plus a handful of blogger-commentators. ABC News is fielding an on-air team of five. CBS News and Fox News are relying on their London bureaus, which have two correspondents apiece. The top anchormen of all four networks are staying home. What explains the difference in the coverage? NBC News says the Games are such an inherently compelling story that its massive commitment is justified. But it might be a little bit more complicated than that. The differing approaches to covering the Games may provide an illustration of the forces that sometimes shape the TV-news agenda. In this case, what constitutes “news” seems to depend on not just who’s playing, but also who’s paying.
benton.org/node/131024 | Washington Post
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VIEWERS COMPLAIN
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Richard Sandomir]
NBC might have believed that streaming all the sports live from the London Games would have inoculated it from criticism of its Olympic broadcasting policy. The past animosity rested on tape-delaying certain marquee sports into prime time. But now Twitter has turned into a fiery digital soapbox against NBC, as its users have merged their resentment over tape delay with problems viewing the live streams. The outrage has been distilled, simply, into #nbcfail. It is difficult for now to determine if #nbcfail represents a tiny minority or is a sampling of a widespread problem. NBC believes it is the former. Tape delay has been an effective tool for all Olympic networks, which have rationalized its use with this mantra: we hold the marquee sports until prime time to harvest the highest rating and optimize our advertising so we can afford our ever-increasing rights fees. But fans long upset with tape delay have reason to keep complaining. Major sports are always televised live. Why not the Olympics? And with the tools available to NBC — multiple networks and the Internet — an all-live Olympics is possible.
benton.org/node/131022 | New York Times
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THERE ARE TWO OLYMPICS
[SOURCE: The Atlantic, AUTHOR: Megan Garber]
Attendees at London's Olympic events were asked to avoid sending non-urgent text messages and tweets during those events -- because the resulting overload to data networks was compromising the television coverage of those events. That seems like an apt metaphor for an Olympics that is pitting not just athlete against athlete, but also screen against screen. There are, actually, two versions of the Games this year. There are the events as we see them on TV, highly produced and heavily narrative and ad-filled and time-delayed; and then there are the events as they play out online, through live blogs and live tweets and athletes' Instagrams and full, nearly real-time recaps. These two versions of the Olympics are the same thing only in the sense that, say, quiche and custard are the same: They take the same basic ingredient and, through cooking them differently, create two completely separate products. It's hard not to read some future-of-television lessons into those Two Olympics.
benton.org/node/131032 | Atlantic, The
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BIRDS TO BROADBAND
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Hannah Rubenstein]
Network solutions company AcmePacket collected a bunch of interesting Olympic communication stats from around the Web and created an infographic called “London Calling: Mobility & the Olympic Games.” The graphic traces the evolution of how competition results were transmitted to sports fans far and wide. Beginning with the 776 B.C .games, and lasting until 384 A.D., when Roman Emperor Theodosius I banned the Olympics in a bid to enforce Christianity as a state religion, homing pigeons were the primary form of disseminating information. As centuries of Olympic radio silence passed, pigeons gave way to more technologically advanced methods, and by 1896, when the competition was revived by the newly formed International Olympic Committee, telegraphs replaced fowl as the messengers of choice. In 1924, the Olympics were broadcast over the radio for the first time, and in 1936, a live telecast was shown to viewers in Berlin and Potsdam, Germany. By 1960, the Games were being broadcast on television worldwide; 36 years later, in 1996, Atlanta hosted the first “Internet Olympics,” marked by the competition’s very own Web page. Today, a mere 16 years later, we have the 24/7 Olympic Athletes Hub, dozens of smartphone apps that track everything from the progress of the Olympic torch to the location of toilets in the host city, and the London Eye alight with a rainbow of colors that correspond to Twitter sentiment about the Games.
benton.org/node/131021 | Washington Post
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THE OLYMPICS AND TV
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Stacey Higginbotham]
[Commentary] Once again, NBC is irritating the heck out of millions of Americans by messing around with the Olympics. Once again, the decision to show the opening ceremony in prime time via a time delay has resulted in people accusing NBC of “not getting it,” and of thinking “it’s 1992.” Once again, the decision to edit the games has some sports fans irked about cuts NBC made in the opening ceremony. And once again, U.S. consumers don’t get it. Sure, people are frustrated because they can’t easily stream the Olympics online without a cable subscription, and there will always be sports fans who don’t want the edited version of The Games with the life stories on athletes and dramatic cuts. But frankly, for now, NBC doesn’t really care what those people want. NBC paid $1.18 billion for the right to broadcast the Olympics and it will be a cold day in hell before it dilutes the amount it can charge advertisers or the value it has to cable providers. In many ways, even though NBC depends on huge audiences to justify the rates it’s charging advertisers, it can afford to alienate some of them.
benton.org/node/131018 | GigaOm
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MORE STORIES FROM ABROAD
These headlines presented in partnership with:
New America Foundation logo

BEIJING TARGETS ONLINE POLITICAL RUMORS
[SOURCE: ComputerWorld, AUTHOR: Michael Kan]
More than 5,000 people arrested for online illegal activities as part of recent crackdown
A Beijing government official said this week the city would crackdown on Internet users spreading political rumors that attack Chinese Communist party leaders, after authorities arrested 5,007 people suspected of online illegal activities. The head of Beijing's public security bureau, Fu Zhenghua, made the statements, which were later published in various state-controlled publications on Thursday. The statements came just days after a major rain storm hit the capital during the weekend and left 37 people within the city dead, according to government estimates. Internet users in the country, however, suspect the death toll may be higher, and have complained that authorities did little to warn residents about the impending storm. China, however, imposes strict censorship on anti-government discussion, and has deleted sensitive posts relating to the storm on Chinese blogs and Twitter-like sites in the country.
benton.org/node/131035 | ComputerWorld
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HOUSE OF LORDS BROADBAND REPORT
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Daniel Thomas]
The UK government’s broadband strategy has been attacked by a House of Lords committee for failing to bridge the “digital divide” of Internet access across the country. A report published by the communications committee, chaired by Lord Inglewood, says there has been a preoccupation with speed rather than widening access and the need for a “future proof national network.” The committee is worried that people and businesses in some areas of the UK could be left behind and argues for an alternative policy driven by providing universal access rather than “enhanced provision for those with already good connections.” The committee recommended that Ofcom, the telecoms regulator, considers changes to several aspects of the regulatory regime and undertakes a detailed costing of its proposal. It also suggested that the government consider the long term possibility of switching terrestrial broadcasting to the Internet.
The switch to digital television is not yet complete, but UK households could be forced to adjust their sets again with the committee now forecasting a second wave of switchover, this time from the airwaves to the internet. The government should draw up plans to have every channel, including those from the BBC, broadcast over the Internet, freeing up the spectrum for other uses such as mobile phones, the House of Lords suggested. "Eventually the case for transferring the carriage of broadcast content, including public service broadcasting, from spectrum to the internet altogether will become overwhelming," the Lords communications committee said.
benton.org/node/131052 | Financial Times | The Guardian | UK Parliament
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ALIBABA
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Evelyn Rusli, Michael De La Merced]
The Alibaba Group, a Chinese e-commerce giant, is close to completing a more than $8 billion round of financing that will value it at as much as $43 billion in equity, according to two people briefed on the matter. Alibaba plans to use the bulk of that new money to buy back a 20 percent stake in itself from Yahoo for $7.1 billion. Yahoo owns 40 percent of Alibaba. With its financing nearly in place, Alibaba is prepared not only to solidify its position as the most valuable privately held Internet company but also to take a big step toward separating itself from Yahoo, which has struggled to revive its brand and stock price.
benton.org/node/131051 | New York Times
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WEST BANK’S EMERGING SILICON VALLEY EVADES ISSUES OF BORDERS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Isabel Kershner]
The spotless cafeteria is fashionably furnished with fluorescent orange and lime green tables, and there are table tennis and foosball tables in the basement. What else could it be but a tech start-up, even here? The idea, of course, is to give employees something resembling the comfortable, innovation-friendly working conditions that are a hallmark of Silicon Valleys around the world, said Murad Tahboub, 42, the managing director of ASAL Technologies. Because that is what Ramallah, the West Bank city where the Palestinian Authority has its administrative headquarters, has ambitions to become: a hub for the information and communications technology industry. With 120 employees, ASAL is one of the largest companies in the small but burgeoning Palestinian tech sector, which many of those involved say is on the verge of big things. “We are in the right position to have exponential growth,” said Tahboub, looking every bit the part with his slicked-back hair and black-rimmed Lacoste eyeglasses. Compared with other industries that the anemic West Bank economy might look to develop, the information and communications technology sector has an advantage: it is much less affected by impediments to movement, like the barriers, checkpoints and permit requirements that Israel imposes on the territory in the name of security. “This is a sector that has no borders,” Tahboub observed. “You just need electricity and a telephone line.”
benton.org/node/131037 | New York Times
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JOURNALISM

MCCONNELL LIKES NEW MEDIA ENVIRONMENT
[SOURCE: BuzzFeed, AUTHOR: John Stanton]
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told BuzzFeed that while many of his generation mourn the fall of newspapers, he is celebrating the rise of social media — precisely because of the havoc it has wreaked on an old media landscape that, in his view, favored the Democrats. “Let me tell you, I think the New York Times monopoly is over,” Sen McConnell said. “Arthur Sulzberger used to have the biggest megaphone in America. And all you have to do is look at the dwindling size of newspapers, even one as big as his.” “To the extent that there isn’t media domination like there was in the days NBC, ABC, CBS the New York Times, the Washington Post, particularly since most people on my side of the aisle feel they had a pretty obvious bias … those days are over,” he said. “I kind of like this new environment. I think its much more competitive, much more balanced."
benton.org/node/131041 | BuzzFeed
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DIGITAL FIRST NEWSPAPERS
[SOURCE: Columbia Journalism Review, AUTHOR: Dean Starkman]
Like them or not, newspaper paywalls continue better-than-expected performances, the latest good (for some of us) news coming from The New York Times Company and Pearson’s Financial Times. The FT now says its digital subscribers make up more than half of its roughly 600,000 paid subscribers, having grown 31 percent from the 2011 quarter. It’s a potent symbolic milestone because it points toward the day, whenever that is, when newspapers become entirely digital products—ones for which people will pay. What the FT milestone shows is that “digital first” does not have to mean “free.” It’s not about the trees. And while it certainly helps to be a globally recognized brand, metro papers in the US have already demonstrated that they, too, benefit from collecting subscriptions with minimal sacrifices in traffic.
benton.org/node/130999 | Columbia Journalism Review
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MEDIA AND ELECTIONS

CAMPAIGN AD RATES
[SOURCE: MediaPost, AUTHOR: David Goetzl]
At least on one level, Democrats seem to be making out better than Republicans with NBC’s Olympic coverage. The Republican National Committee (RNC) is paying 33% more for a prime-time spot than the Obama campaign. The RNC plans to air three 30-second ads at $451,000 each during NBC’s prime-time coverage. The Obama campaign, which is running 15 ads, has locked in its price at $340,200 a spot. The RNC last week inked a $2.6 million national Olympic buy, where it is paying higher rates than Obama across the board, according to an NBCUniversal political file. NBC does not comment on specifics of its deals. But the network is likely taking a cue from an FCC statute, which entitles a candidate to pay a comparable rate to general advertisers. For the most part, national political committees are not entitled to that benefit and a network does not face limits in what it can charge them. Using estimates, both the Obama campaign and the RNC appear to be receiving a good discount compared to the general market, with President Obama paying about half that going rate and the RNC about 60% as much. President Obama is spending more than double the RNC for all its national time during the London Games, with a $6 million buy.
benton.org/node/131016 | MediaPost
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INTERNET/BROADBAND

BRISTOL, VIRGINIA
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Arik Hesseldahl]
If you want gigabit Internet speeds from your own fiber optic line, like the one that Google is offering in Kansas City, you can move to another community that also happens to straddle a state line. It’s called Bristol, and it is situated on the Virginia-Tennessee border. On the Virginia side of the border, the local power company, Bristol Virginia Utilities, started building a fiber network for its own operations in 1999 after a nasty storm knocked out its operations. The plan was to connect eight substations with a fiber optic ring. When it turned out that adding capacity was cheap and easy, it was a no-brainer to add local government buildings and schools to the network. Bristol area schools have had access to gigabit speeds since 2000, when most schools were happy to have 1.5 megabits. The next step involved offering Internet, TV and phone services to consumers directly, but it ran up against a state law that had the effect of protecting incumbent carriers — basically Charter and Sprint.
benton.org/node/131045 | Wall Street Journal
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TELEVISION

PAY TV MODEL SAFE
[SOURCE: paidContent.org, AUTHOR: Daniel Frankel]
Media companies worried about their ability to continue collecting increasingly fat affiliate fees from cable and satellite distributors can rest easy. According to a Wall Street research memo, the existing pay TV model will continue to spin off high single-digit program licensing fee increases for these conglomerates for the next dozen years or so. Over time, however, large media companies buttressed with revenues from myriad smaller cable channels will see their models start to falter, as the pay TV business moves inexorably away from program bundling to a la carte selection. Lazard Capital analyst Barton Crockett’s memo suggests there is enough tolerance in the margins of pay TV service providers, as well in the personal finance budgets of cable and satellite subscribers, to maintain the pay TV model until at least 2024.
benton.org/node/131055 | paidContent.org
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CONTENT

DOC MCSTUFFINS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Brooks Barnes]
For decades many African-Americans have voiced conflicted feelings about Disney. Many fault this entertainment colossus for being slow to introduce a black princess as a peer to Cinderella and Snow White. The racial stereotyping in early animated movies like “Dumbo” lives on through DVD rereleases. African-Americans can also bring up “Song of the South,” a 1946 film that Disney has labored to keep hidden because of its idyllic depiction of slavery. Disney has worked overtime in recent years to leave that past behind, and a surprising groundswell of support from black viewers for a new TV cartoon called “Doc McStuffins” is the latest indication that its efforts may be paying off. Aimed at preschoolers, “Doc McStuffins” centers on its title character, a 6-year-old African-American girl. Her mother is a doctor (Dad stays home and tends the garden), and the girl emulates her by opening a clinic for dolls and stuffed animals. “Doc McStuffins” seems to have struck a cultural nerve, generating loud applause on parent blogs, Facebook and even in academia for its positive vocational message for African-American girls.
benton.org/node/131061 | New York Times
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SOCIAL MEDIA AND MARKETING
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Stephanie Clifford]
While consumers may think of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare as places to post musings and interact with friends, companies like Wal-Mart and Samuel Adams are turning them into extensions of market research departments. And companies are just beginning to figure out how to use the enormous amount of information available. “It tells us exactly what customers are interested in,” said Elizabeth Francis, chief marketing officer of the Gilt Groupe. Gilt asks customers to vote on which products to include in a sale, and sets up Facebook chats between engineers and customers to help refine products. “It’s amazing that we can get that kind of real feedback, as opposed to speculating,” Francis said.
benton.org/node/131063 | New York Times
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SPECTRUM/WIRELESS

OPPOSITION TO VERIZON-SPECTRUMCO
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Ben Cardin (D-MD) criticized Verizon's $3.6 billion deal with a coalition of cable companies in letters to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Justice Department. The letters, sent last week, urged the agencies to carefully consider the evidence that the deal could hurt "competition, consumers and jobs." The deal allows Verizon to buy blocks of radio spectrum from cable companies including Comcast, Time Warner and Cox. The companies also agreed to cross sell each other's services. But Sens Cardin and Mikulski worried that the arrangements will discourage Verizon from expanding its own cable business, FiOS. "People of color and lower-income households in urban and rural parts of Maryland will be disproportionately affected by the decreased incentives to invest in continued 'build-out' of the FiOS network," the senators wrote. They also wrote that discouraging the build-out of FiOS would prevent Verizon from hiring more workers.
benton.org/node/131057 | Hill, The
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AGENDA

TIME FOR NEW TELECOM ACT
[SOURCE: Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, AUTHOR: David Honig]
Congress needs to take dramatic steps to bring telecommunications regulation into the 21st century, and to close the race- and wealth-related ownership, employment and participation divides to make possible the fulfillment of our most treasured democratic principles. To accomplish these goals, Congress needs to think big and act big. The time has come for Congress to adopt a new Telecommunications Act for the Digital Age to update or replace the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Here is what such a statute could accomplish:
It could make the United States the world’s leader in broadband infrastructure, adoption, informed use and consumer protection.
It could release the FCC from regulatory make-work when disruptive technologies ensure the market’s competitiveness, and it could empower the FCC to take strong steps to protect consumers when the market has failed due to such external factors as systemic racial discrimination and its present effects.
It could harmonize regulation across the ecosystem of converging and competing industries to ensure technological neutrality and consistent consumer protection.
It could both expect and enable the Commission to rapidly resolve complex issues while winning the confidence of the appellate courts.
It could enable the nation to achieve universal broadband access, adoption, and affordability within five years.
And it could ensure that all Americans, including minorities and women, will participate fully as owners and managers in the media, telecom and high tech industries.
benton.org/node/131006 | Minority Media and Telecommunications Council
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POLICYMAKERS

FCC COMMISSIONER AJIT PAI
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Brooks Boliek]
Federal Communications Commission member Ajit Pai, the newest Republican on the panel, is proving anything but shy about establishing his conservative credentials from the get-go. In a speech in Pennsylvania and in his first dissenting vote opposing the Democratic majority, Commissioner Pai is making it clear that he isn’t just going to be a go-along-to-get-along member of the panel that oversees some of the most important industries in America. The stance that Commissioners Pai and Robert McDowell took in opposing an order that found Comcast discriminated against the Tennis Channel in favor of sports networks underlines the difference between the parties when it comes to the commission’s role. Democratic staffers say the language in the dissent surprised them, telling POLITICO it struck some sparks in what is a usually collegial atmosphere. “That caused all kinds of anger here,” one Democratic staffer admitted. Pai’s staffers say the Democrats should have known what was coming, as they had already told Chairman Julius Genachowski that they planned to oppose the administrative law judge’s decision that found Comcast in violation of the program carriage rules.
benton.org/node/131054 | Politico
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COPPS TO LEAD COMMON CAUSE INITIATIVE
[SOURCE: Common Cause, AUTHOR: Press release]
With leadership from former Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps, Common Cause announced plans for a national Media and Democracy Reform Initiative aimed at spotlighting and countering the growing political and economic power of the communications industry. Among other things, the Media and Democracy Reform Initiative will address issues created by industry mergers and consolidation of control within regions and across media platforms; the stripping of local control over cable and municipal broadband; carte blanche broadcast licensing without regard to statutory obligations to serve the public interest; challenges to the principles of ubiquitous broadband deployment and an open Internet; and attacks on funding for public broadcasting. With its longtime focus on the role of money in politics, Edgar said Common Cause is particularly concerned with the drowning out of voters’ diverse political voices by massive political spending by the few. “We see this initiative as a natural complement to our other efforts to counter the impact of big money on our politics and our elections and to ensure that ours is a government ‘of, by and for the people,’” said Common Cause President Bob Edgar.
benton.org/node/130997 | Common Cause | B&C
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COMPANY NEWS

NEW TACTIC IN TECH WARS
[SOURCE: Fortune, AUTHOR: Roger Parloff]
If the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the nation's preeminent digital rights nonprofit, had disclosed last year that it received a cool $1 million gift from Google -- about 17% of its total revenue -- some eyebrows might have been raised. The group typically describes itself as "member-supported" and, like most nonprofits, it treasures its above-the-commercial-fray, public-interest-group aura and reputation for independence. In fact, Google did transfer $1 million to the EFF last year, but the money did not have to be, and wasn't, reported as a corporate donation. And if, as currently planned, the EFF receives another $1 million this year from Facebook, it won't have to report that as a donation either. That's because both transfers are formally court-ordered outlays being paid by those companies to settle class-action suits. "Well, of course those aren't donations!" the reader might interject. "They're the diametric opposite: involuntary, judicially mandated payments forced upon them by an adversary!" That's not the whole story either. These payments to the EFF are being made in suits the EFF played no role in bringing, and the defendants themselves -- Google and Facebook, in these instances -- helped select EFF to be their beneficiary.
benton.org/node/131001 | Fortune
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