Diversity

Black and Latino representation has declined in Silicon Valley, and although Asians are the most likely to be hired, they are the least likely to be promoted, according to a new study exposing persistent racial prejudice in the tech industry.

The research from not-for-profit organization Ascend Foundation, which examined official employment data from 2007 to 2015, suggests that people of color are widely marginalized and denied career opportunities in tech – and that the millennial generation is unlikely to crack the glass ceiling for minorities. “There have been no changes for Asians or any other minority over time – men or women,” said Buck Gee, the study’s co-author and an executive adviser to Ascend, a US-based research group that advocates for Asian representation in businesses. For some groups, he added, “It’s actually worse.”

While women and people of color are employed at tech companies in larger numbers than they used to be, their upward mobility at those companies has stagnated. From 2007 to 2015, white men consistently composed a higher share of executive roles than professional roles at tech companies, the study found. It’s the reverse for Asians, Hispanics and blacks, especially if they’re women.

Rep Robin Kelly (D-IL), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, is pushing Facebook to strengthen its advertising standards after Russian operatives used the company’s ad service to attack groups like Black Lives Matter during the 2016 elections. In a letter sent to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Rep Robin Kelly pressed the company to “ensure that discriminatory and tactically divisive ad-targeting is aggressively prevented.” The Illinois Democrat pointed to Russian-linked Facebook pages that promoted “incendiary anti-immigrant rallies, targeted the Black Lives Matter movement and focused attentions on critical election swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan.” “It is my belief that Facebook cannot be the Trojan horse through which America’s vulnerabilities are exploited,” Kelly continued.

Women and minorities have seen significant gains among first-time directors in episodic television, a new study from the Directors Guild of America shows. The study of the just-concluded 2016-17 season, released Sept 27, shows the percentage of ethnic minority first-time TV directors more than doubling since 2009-10 and the percentage of women nearly tripling.

“Finally, after years of our efforts to educate the industry, hold employers accountable through our contracts, and push them to do better, we’re seeing signs of meaningful improvement,” said DGA president Thomas Schlamme. The DGA has been studying first-time hires since the 2009-10 season. The new report shows that 56 (or 25%) of all first-time hires in the 2016-17 season were ethnic minorities, up from 24 in the 2015-16 season; 73 (or 32%) were women, up from 38 in the prior season; and 18 (or 8%) were female minorities, up from six.

Allow me to quickly reiterate my call for five policies I believe can help move the needle when it comes to digital inclusion. We have seen how the phenomenal success of low-power FM (LPFM) is playing out in local communities across this country. The first call I wish to make, is for us to find ways, in which to replicate and enhance this success story for more underrepresented groups – that are largely minority and women – who are seeking to be a part of the broadcast landscape. Second, in recent years, I have called for the establishment of a pilot incubator program, aimed at increasing the number of women and minority owners in the broadcast space. Third, when divestitures are required during merger transactions, we should urge parties to strongly consider offers from women and minority business owners. Fourth, the time to act on the Commission’s independent programming NPRM is now. With a robust record of more than 36,000 filings, I believe we have enough data to move to a final order, targeting two of the worst offending practices facing many independent video programmers: “unconditional” most favored nation clauses, and unreasonable alternative distribution method provisions. And lastly, with the help of Congress, we can and should reinstate a tax certificate program, focused on promoting opportunities for new entrants.

We recruited you to put you to work. As members of the Committee, your mission is to offer guidance so that the agency can take important steps toward increasing diversity throughout the communications industry and bringing digital opportunity to all Americans.

One of your tasks will be to identify issues that might not already be on the Federal Communications Commission’s radar. Another will be to advise us about issues that we’ve already identified. Another task we’ll assign you is to examine is how we can make sure that disadvantaged communities have access to next-generation networks. Broadband can be a great equalizer when it comes to jobs, health care, education, and civic engagement. But if we don’t bridge the digital divide, communities on the wrong side of that divide will fall further behind in each of these areas. Our goal should be ubiquitous, high-speed networks that bring together all Americans—and I do mean all Americans. Last but not least, we’ll ask you to take a hard look at diversity in Silicon Valley. I look forward to working with you to increase diversity throughout the communications industry and to bring digital opportunity to all Americans.

Here are the five biggest issues causing lawmakers to look at the technology industry in a new, harsher light: The Russia investigation, A new antitrust movement, Culture wars, Sex trafficking, and Advertising algorithms.

This Public Notice serves as notice that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has appointed chairs for the three working groups for the Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment (ACDDE):
Henry Rivera, Senior Advisor, Emma Bowen Foundation, will chair the Broadcast Diversity and Development Working Group.
Heather Gate, Director of Digital Inclusion, Connected Nation, will chair the Digital Empowerment and Inclusion Working Group.
Marc H. Morial, President and CEO, National Urban League, will chair the Diversity in the Tech Sector Working Group.

Chairman Pai previously designated Julia Johnson, President, NetCommunications, LLC, to serve as Chair of the ACDDE, and Diane Sutter, President/CEO, ShootingStar Broadcasting, to serve as Vice Chair. The ACDDE will hold its first meeting on Monday, September 25, 2017.

So far in 2017, the lawyer Douglas Wigdor, a conservative Republican, has filed 11 suits against Fox News for defamation, sexual harassment and racial discrimination.

Television viewers have long been familiar with Fox’s public product, but for more than a decade, there have also been persistent glimpses of its private culture as numerous women have come forward accusing men like Roger Ailes — or the host Eric Bolling, who was ousted this month after sending lewd text messages to female colleagues — of predatory sexual misconduct. As Ailes did before he died in May, Bolling has denied the allegations. The accusations by Wigdor’s clients — former news anchors, former news analysts, former accounting department employees — have only deepened the portrait of a toxic culture. One of the people he represents, a regular guest political commentator, says the network retaliated against her after she lodged a rape claim against a Fox Business host. Another, a Bangladeshi payroll worker, says a colleague once referred to him as a “terrorist.” In lawsuits that run to nearly 300 pages, there are charges that the network fired a freelance reporter at Fox 5 News, its New York affiliate, after she became pregnant; that Fox’s former comptroller repeatedly ridiculed black and Hispanic colleagues; and that some Fox journalists conspired with the White House to produce fake news.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai selected Julia Johnson, president of a consulting firm called NetCommunications, to lead the FCC’s Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment, a group Chairman Pai said he established to champion the voice of every American, “no matter their race, gender, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.” Despite the laudatory title and mission of the diversity committee, Johnson is a consultant who perfectly embodies the corporations-first agenda of President Donald Trump’s FCC.

Johnson has long worked on behalf of industry groups seeking to undermine consumer regulations and promote the interests of large corporate clients. Johnson also chairs the Multicultural Media, Telecom & Internet Council which is funded by Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and other large telecommunications firms. MMTC’s pro-Trump administration statements, cast as being made on behalf of communities of color, are typical of Johnson’s approach. Over the years, Johnson has used racial minorities as a cudgel to disingenuously lobby on behalf of industry. Johnson’s history of “astroturfing,” a term for lobbying using fake grassroots groups, goes back more than a decade.

Ellen Pao has a message for Silicon Valley: It's time for the white male-dominated tech industry to "reset" itself.

"When I use the term reset, it's really that we need to shake out the people who don't believe in inclusion and bring in the people who have been excluded," she said. Pao says she figured hard work and her "super power" (sleeping remarkably few hours a night) could overcome the inequities thrown in her path. "It's not something you want to believe. It takes a lot to shake that belief out of you," Pao said. But, when she had trouble getting investments approved and to holding onto companies that were doing well, she noticed she wasn't the only one being denied opportunities that came easily to men. "There's a point where I realized that other women were doing much better work and had much more successful investments than the men," she said. "It made me realize the system really wasn't fair and it really wasn't based on merit."