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February 2016

John E. Reinhardt, Ambassador and Head of U.S. Information Agency

John E. Reinhardt, the first career diplomat to lead the United States Information Agency, died in Silver Spring (MD). He was 95.

Dr. Reinhardt was appointed ambassador to Nigeria by the Nixon administration in 1971 and later served as assistant secretary of state for public affairs under Henry A. Kissinger. He then became the first career diplomat and the first university educator to be director of the information agency. President Jimmy Carter named him to the post in 1977. “He was the real thing, a genuine, practicing cultural diplomat,” Richard T. Arndt, another envoy, wrote in 2005 in his book “The First Resort of Kings.” The agency’s focus, Dr. Reinhardt said at the time, “was always fundamentally one-way. Its mission was to tell others about our society.” Renamed the United States International Communication Agency and encompassing Voice of America broadcasts and cultural exchanges, the agency under Dr. Reinhardt expanded its agenda to include “speakers sent abroad, seminars held abroad, visitors brought to this country,” he said then. “Our activities and programs as a whole,” Dr. Reinhardt added, “should be designed to learn as well as to inform, and to inform as well as to learn.”

Big European telecom companies are renewing their push for new rules that would help them better compete with Silicon Valley

Major European carriers including Deutsche Telekom AG and Spain’s Telefónica SA are using the telecom industry’s annual conference in Barcelona to step up a campaign to pressure the European Union to repeal some of the extensive regulations governing carriers, or to extend similar rules to Internet-based text-message and voice-call services such as Facebook’s WhatsApp.

Top executives from 11 European carriers, including Vodafone Group PLC and Orange SA, are set to meet Feb 25 with the EU’s executive arm to urge for ways to “adapt its policy approach” to areas that include “online platforms” as part of a planned review of telecommunications policy in 2016. The major issue: Telecom firms complain that they do the expensive grunt work of building towers and other infrastructure, while online companies use those networks to offer services like WhatsApp or Google’s Hangouts for free. Telecom firms also argue that they are forced to pay special taxes, offer services at regulated rates and have strict industry-specific limits on how they can use their clients’ information. For instance, telecom executives chafe at privacy rules they contend make it difficult for them to sell location-based advertisements—a profit center for Google and Facebook.

Don't Let FCC Cut Off Oklahoma Lifeline

[Commentary] In a February 2, 2016 press release, Federal Communications Commissioner Ajit Pai called the continuation of Tribal Lifeline subsidies in Oklahoma a “legal scandal” and a “bloated tax payer subsidy.” The Universal Service Fund is not tax based, but rather a federal subsidy program based on fees and designed to make services affordable to impoverished families. Enhanced Tribal Lifeline subsidies are designed to help those living on Tribal lands afford basic telephone service. At issue is the map used to determine “tribal lands.”

Pai’s objections are based upon the fact that the FCC will, at least for a short period of time, continue to use a map that includes lands that were historically occupied by Native Americans. Pai’s knee-jerk statement implies that Tribes are somehow the culpable recipients of undeserved benefits. Pai's statements also suggest a misunderstanding of how the Lifeline program actually operates to assist all low-income families on Tribal lands, not just Tribal families. Rather than acknowledge that the key reason for continuing use of the historic map is simply to enable the FCC to consult with Oklahoma Tribes before unilaterally eliminating important Tribal subsidies, Pai simply ignores the complex historical relationship between the federal government and Native Nations. The real scandal is not the continuation of certain benefits to those who live on Tribal lands, but Pai’s suggestion that the FCC should not have engaged in government-to-government consultations with Oklahoma Tribal Nations before unilaterally eliminating important legal rights.

[Loris Taylor is the resident and CEO of Native Public Media; Matthew Rantanen is the director of technology for Southern California Tribal Digital Village; and Susan Feller is the executive director of the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums]

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