Research

Even if members of Congress truly want to translate their current pique at institutional dysfunction into genuine deliberation, into a process of “regular order” where committees develop legislation, where would they begin? They’d need to build back a whole lot of lost capacity. Consider some responses from a new survey of senior staff from the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) titled “State of the Congress: Staff Perspectives on Institutional Capacity in the House and the Senate.”

Below are the percentages of senior staff who said they were “very satisfied” with their chamber’s performance in the following benchmarks:
“The chamber’s human resource support and infrastructure is adequate to support staffers’ official duties (e.g., training, professional development, benefits, etc.)”: 5%
“Members have adequate time and resources to understand, consider, and deliberate policy and legislation”: 6%
“The technological infrastructure is adequate to support Members’ official duties”: 6%
“The chamber has adequate capacity and support (staff, research, capability, infrastructure, etc.) to perform its role in democracy”: 11%

Congress has been de-investing in its institutional capacity for decades, and congressional staff earn absurdly low salaries, leading to high turnover and consistent staff inexperience.

The US residential median broadband price was $80 per month during the second quarter of 2017, according to research from Point Topic. Globally, the average residential download speed was 135 Mbps and the average monthly charge was $105. The best value was provided by fiber (208 Mbps for $94) and the worst by copper (14 Mbps for $68).

The range between high and low prices for broadband service tend to be more extreme in some countries than in others, according to Point Topic’s data. India (a high/low range of about $120/$5), Brazil (about $115/$20) and Turkey (about $118/$20) have a higher range, while Germany (about $50/$22), Japan (about $35/$3), South Korea (about $55/$30) and Russia (about $30/$5) tend to have less of a gap between high and low broadband speeds. The midrange seems to be comprised of China (about $60/$5), the United States (about $85/$15), France (about $55/$10) and the UK (about $55/$5).

In the US, roughly nine-in-ten adults (93%) ever get news online (either via mobile or desktop), and the online space has become a host for the digital homes of both legacy news outlets and new, “born on the web” news outlets. Digital advertising revenue across all digital entities (beyond just news) continues to grow, with technology companies playing a large role in the flow of both news and revenue.

Digital-native news outlets are also adopting other outreach and engagement methods. Fully 97% of these outlets offer newsletters, and 92% have an official presence on Apple News. Three-quarters, meanwhile, release podcasts and 61% allow comments on their articles. These outlets are also highly likely to use social media as part of their outreach. Nearly all have official pages or accounts on Facebook (100%), Twitter (100%), YouTube (97%) and Instagram (92%). Far fewer (25%) have an official channel or account on Snapchat.

On the whole, the news offerings of US public broadcasters have been marked by relative financial stability and, in the past year, audience growth. The top 20 NPR-affiliated public radio stations (by listenership) had on average a total weekly listenership of about 10 million in 2016, up from about 9 million in 2015. (This includes listeners for NPR programming as well as original or other syndicated content aired on these stations.)

NPR’s digital platforms continue to be an important part of its reach. Both the NPR News app, which offers livestreams from individual stations and digital content, and the newer NPR One app, which offers a stream of individual shows and podcasts, have shown steady growth across devices in the average number of total completed sessions each month. The financial picture for news outlets in public broadcasting appears to be strong both locally and nationally, even showing some improvement year over year. At the national level, NPR increased its total operating revenue in 2016 to $213 million, up 9% from 2015 levels. PRI saw gains as well, rising 26% to about $22 million in total revenue for 2016. APM’s total revenue, on the other hand, went down 6% year over year, accounting for $126 million in 2016. At the local public radio level, an analysis of the public filings provided by the 125 largest news-oriented licensees (organizations that operate local public radio stations) shows overall steady revenue. Between 2014 and 2015 – the last year for which reliable data are available – total revenue for this group remained relatively flat at $807 million.

Many black-oriented newspapers – some more than a century old – have seen a slow decline in circulation in recent years, mirroring the overall decline in newspaper circulation. Both print and television Hispanic media, on the other hand, have enjoyed relative strength over the last decade, but that growth has now slowed. As the two largest Spanish-language television networks in the US, Univision and Telemundo are key providers of news for Spanish speakers. While viewership for some shows on these networks was roughly flat or even increased in 16, viewership for each network’s largest news program decreased at least slightly.

Black-oriented newspapers are a long-standing minority news sector in the US. The black press trade association (National Newspaper Publishers Association) currently lists around 150 members on its website, but few of these papers have regularly audited circulation figures, making it difficult to acquire audience figures for the sector as a whole. There are, however, some black-oriented newspapers – most of which are weekly or semiweekly – with recent circulation data available through the main audit bureaus that can serve as indicators. Among these, the data show that African American newspapers with a substantial amount of paid circulation either lost circulation or held steady from 2015 to 2016. For a number of mostly free-distribution newspapers, circulation results were more mixed.

The Economist is the most trusted news source in America, while President Donald Trump, Yahoo and BuzzFeed rank near the bottom, according to a new survey from the University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute. The weekly magazine published in the UK is more trusted than a variety of American mainstream news organizations, according to the Trusting News Project survey. Public television, Reuters, BBC and NPR round out the top five most-trusted sources. Another British news organization, The Guardian, ranks sixth, proving that many American’s don’t trust news from their own country. In fact, Donald Trump himself is among the least-trusted sources, with only Occupy Democrats, BuzzFeed, Breitbart and social media ranking lower than the president.

Recently, Civis Analytics released a competition poll that shows broad, bipartisan opposition to the proposed merger between AT&T and Time Warner. The poll found that “[t]he proposed merger between AT&T and Time Warner is opposed by 64 percent of Americans, including 65 percent of Democrats, 64 percent of Republicans, and 63 percent of Independents.” The poll further revealed that “[a] large majority (83 percent) of Americans also believe that ‘mergers among media companies or internet service providers will raise costs for consumers.’”

The following can be attributed to John Bergmayer, Senior Counsel at Public Knowledge: “We believe that a consolidated media landscape threatens to reduce the diversity of viewpoints Americans have access to, and consolidation tends to drive up prices for consumers. The public appears to agree. As the government continues to review the proposed AT&T merger with Time Warner, and Sinclair’s proposed purchase of Tribune, it is critical that the antitrust principles and communications policies explicitly designed to prevent price gouging and designed to promote diversity of viewpoints are strictly enforced.”

[Commentary] In a new project, we have been working to track and understand incivility by examining the extent to which users post offensive comments on Reddit. Reddit has received a great deal of attention from political analysts in recent years due to the fact that it has a robust offering of political discussion boards. In fact, Reddit has become an important enough player in online political discussions that President Obama and a host of 2016 presidential candidates took to the forum to engage with its users. Findings:
Posts became more offensive during the general election campaign
Offensive posts are more popular

What’s most telling is that our research shows that the tone of discussions on Reddit seems to respond to how our politicians are behaving.

[Rishab Nithyanand is a postdoctoral researcher in the College of Information and Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Brian Schaffner is a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts. Phillipa Gill is an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.]

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) collects and maintains personal data on millions of individuals, including data related to security clearance investigations. In 2015, OPM reported significant breaches of personal information that affected 21.5 million individuals. The Senate report accompanying the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, 2016 included a provision for GAO to review information security at OPM. GAO evaluated OPM's (1) actions since the 2015 reported data breaches to prevent, mitigate, and respond to data breaches involving sensitive personnel records and information; (2) information security policies and practices for implementing selected government-wide initiatives and requirements; and (3) procedures for overseeing the security of OPM information maintained by contractors providing IT services. To do so, GAO examined policies, plans, and procedures and other documents; tested controls for selected systems; and interviewed officials. This is a public version of a sensitive report being issued concurrently. GAO omitted certain specific examples due to the sensitive nature of the information.

GAO is making five recommendations to improve OPM's security. OPM concurred with four of these and partially concurred with the one on validating its corrective actions. GAO continues to believe that implementation of this recommendation is warranted. In GAO's limited distribution report, GAO made nine additional recommendations.

The Federal Communications Commission is exploring ways to improve the quality, accuracy, and usefulness of the data it collects on fixed and mobile voice and broadband service. At the same time, the FCC is examining how it can reduce burdens on industry by eliminating unnecessary or onerous data filing requirements. A Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeks comment on proposals to accomplish both these goals as part of the FCC’s ongoing efforts to improve the value of the data it collects.