April 2010

President Barack Obama and the media actually have a surprisingly hostile relationship -- as contentious on a day-to-day basis as any between press and president in the past decade, reporters who cover the White House say. Reporters say the White House is thin-skinned, controlling, eager to go over their heads and stingy with even basic information. All White Houses try to control the message.

But this White House has pledged to be more open than its predecessors, and reporters feel it doesn't live up to that pledge in several key areas:

1) Day-to-day interaction with president Obama is almost nonexistent, and he talks to the press corps far less often than Presidents Bill Clinton or even George W. Bush did. President Clinton took questions nearly every weekday, on average. President Obama barely does it once a week.

2) The ferocity of pushback is intense. A routine press query can draw a string of vitriolic e-mails. A negative story can draw a profane high-decibel phone call or worse. Some reporters feel like they've been frozen out after crossing the White House.

3) Except toward a few reporters, press secretary Robert Gibbs can be distant and difficult to reach — even though his job is to be one of the main conduits from president to press. "It's an odd White House where it's easier to get the White House chief of staff on the phone than the White House press secretary," one top reporter said.

4) And at the very moment many reporters feel shut out, one paper — The New York Times — enjoys a favoritism from President Obama and his staff that makes competitors fume, with gift-wrapped scoops and loads of presidential face time.

With American youth exposed to more advertising than ever before, the Federal Trade Commission is kicking off a new advertising literacy campaign to help older children understand the ads they see and become smarter consumers.

The campaign is targeted to "tweens" aged 8 to 12, and includes a game-based website at Admongo.gov, a curriculum tied to national standards of learning in language arts and social studies that teachers can use to "ad-ucate" students, a library of fictional ads that can be used as teaching tools, and activities for parents and kids to do together. All these materials are free and in the public domain.

The online game at Admongo.gov allows kids to create an avatar and features four levels of play to help them think critically about advertising. In "The Atrium," they identify the ads that are around them. In the "Assemblimator," they learn how to take apart an ad, evaluate its claims, and figure out how ads try to persuade people. In the "Planadtarium," they find out how ads are targeted, and in "The Adgitator," they build and target their own ads. Throughout the game, players learn to ask the three critical questions about ads, no matter where they see them: Who is responsible for the ad? What is it actually saying? What does it want me to do?

Public Knowledge President and Co-Founder Gigi B. Sohn said today that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should enact rules to meet the threats to an open Internet.

Testifying at a Commission hearing in Seattle on "Approaches to Preserving the Open Internet," Sohn said that, "the open, decentralized nature of the Internet is at risk, as the cable, telephone and wireless companies that provide the on-ramps to the Internet seek to insert themselves in the middle - picking winners and losers in the process. The FCC's Open Internet rulemaking proceeding, which would prohibit this kind of discrimination, is a welcome step towards preserving the open Internet."

[Commentary] Could opposing (commercial) sides of the great Network Neutrality debate find consensus?

"I think it ought to be resolved in a deal basically," said Amazon vice president for global public policy Paul Misener. "And the view would be this: Network operators would accept Net neutrality rules in exchange for the certainty of explicit permission to offer paid managed services, and that kind of a package it seems to me is eminently doable and it benefits all ... stakeholders."

Tom Tauke, Verizon's executive vice president for public affairs, policy and communications, was not so explicit, but he was also optimistic about the idea of the industry reaching its own solution. "I think in the near term we can reach agreements on the Net neutrality issue which would allow consumers to be protected, the network providers to be able to offer all the services that we are capable of providing, and all of the other players to be certain that they also can thrive in the space," he said. Tauke said Verizon was working hard with Google and other players to try to reach a consensus and then offer that solution to the FCC.

The idea of stakeholders devising their own Net neutrality solution is particularly appealing now that serious questions have arisen about whether the FCC has authority over broadband.