You’re reading the Benton Foundation’s Weekly Round-up, a recap of the biggest (or most overlooked) telecommunications stories of the week. The round-up is delivered via e-mail each Friday; to get your own copy, subscribe at www.benton.org/user/register
Robbie’s Round-Up
Week of January 4-8, 2015
The Consumer Electronics Show may be the country's biggest yearly confab for wacky and futuristic gadgets, but for White House trade officials, it's something else: A political opportunity.
President Barack Obama dispatched his top trade negotiator to Las Vegas to talk up the benefits of a major multilateral deal on international business before a number of tech companies, in hopes that the companies will pressure their representatives in Washington to vote for the trade agreement when the time comes. The trade deal, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, has support from the US Chamber of Commerce and other business groups. It eliminates thousands of foreign tariffs on US exports, potentially making it easier for American companies to sell their goods abroad. At the same time, it has attracted stiff opposition from labor organizations and even some presidential candidates, some of whom worry the TPP will hurt working-class wages and others who say the deal doesn't help the United States enough. That's led to questions about whether President Obama has enough support in Congress to ratify the deal.
[Commentary] Is there a line between what the media should and should not say about Donald Trump? Or has the Republican presidential front-runner erased it with his own boorish behavior?
These are the questions running through my head as I scroll through Twitter posts marked by the hashtag #DonaldTrumpWantsToBangHisDaughter, which “Daily Show” host Trevor Noah promoted on the late-night program. Noah has used this line before -- and, we should emphasize, was making a rhetorical point when he pulled it out again. That point is this: Trump displays a reckless disregard for facts when spreading information (remember those bogus black/white homicide stats he got from “radio shows and everything else”?). So using Trump’s own standard, the logic goes, it’s okay to circulate the notion that he would like to have sexual relations with his daughter. “I’ve even seen people saying it on television,” Noah said sarcastically, as an image of himself from a previous episode appeared onscreen. Besides, Trump has joked that he would date his daughter if, you know, she wasn’t his daughter.
Something about this particular gag feels uncomfortably tasteless. Noah’s wisecrack was personal, and was about something truly depraved. As many online Americans get their news from “The Daily Show” as from USA Today, according to the Pew Research Center. There’s a certain responsibility that comes with that. I just can’t get behind the idea that the press should emulate what it sees in Trump.
T-Mobile USA CEO John Legere has spent much of the day defending the carrier's controversial "Binge On" program, and he didn't hold much back when answering his critics. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which has criticized T-Mobile for throttling video streams down to 480p, asked him on Twitter whether T-Mobile is altering the video streams or just limiting their bandwidth.
Legere responded in a video: “What Binge On does, it includes a proprietary technology and what the technology does is not only detect the video stream but select the appropriate bit rate to optimize to the video, the mobile device. That’s part A of my answer. Part B of my answer is, who the fuck are you, anyway, EFF? Why are you stirring up so much trouble, and who pays you?” EFF Activism Director Rainey Reitman responded, pointing out that it is "an advocacy organization fighting for civil liberties in the digital world," supported by donations from tens of thousands of people.
Legere backed off a bit after his initial response, tweeting that he's not waging a "personal campaign against @EFF." "Let me be clear- I know who the @EFF is," he added. "I’m sure they do a lot of great things for a lot of consumers, but innovation can be controversial!"
At Tbilisi State University in Georgia, US Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara Sonenshine delivered remarks on media freedom.
Why is media freedom so important? Because – as I often say – information is the oxygen that a free and civilized society needs to breathe. Without it societies suffocate. Sometimes there’s no information at all – because governments repress it, or journalists are too intimidated or unmotivated or irresponsible to report the truth. Sometimes the information consists primarily of gossip, rumor, hearsay, and conspiracy theories. So it’s important that we have a diverse and independent press, so the people can trust what they read, hear, and see in the media. When we have a free, fair, and vigorous media environment in a democratic society, we are informed about the truth. And that allows us to make the best decisions we can, based on the most reliable information we can find. We need all sides of the equation to be mutually reinforcing: On one side, there are the fundamental freedoms of expression, assembly, and association that are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and on the other, we need to have freedom of the media so they can hold accountable anyone or any institution that abuses those freedoms. That balance is crucial to a robust democracy. And that’s where education plays a crucial role.
Data from Pew Research Center and other sources show that around half of newspaper readers consume newspapers only in their printed form.
In our study of the local news environments in three markedly different U.S. metropolitan areas, nearly or about half of readers of the local daily paper in Denver (46%), Macon, Ga. (48%), and Sioux City, Iowa (53%) did not access the paper online. These findings are similar to the 56% of newspaper readers in a national survey who said their only contact with a newspaper was in print. The print edition also remains an important part of newspapers’ business model: More than three-quarters of their advertising revenue comes from print. Indeed, print newspaper readers tend to be news enthusiasts. They are more likely to often watch local TV news than those newspaper readers who access the paper online instead of or in addition to the print edition. And although print-only readers in the three cities studied are certainly older than their counterparts who access the paper online – in their mid-50s, compared with online newspaper readers, who were generally in their early to mid-40s – this difference persists even when controlling for age.
If print distribution becomes economically unfeasible, it remains to be seen whether this group will finally move to the online edition, or be content with getting their local news from TV, as they already do. Besides age, print-only readers stand out in some other ways.
© 1994-2024 Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. All Rights Reserved.
