February 2016

POLICYMAKERS

ACEL MOORE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Sam Roberts]
Acel Moore, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who co-founded the National Association of Black Journalists and awakened his white colleagues and their readers to everyday life in black communities, died at his home in Wyncote (PA), near Philadelphia. He was 75. Moore, who was hired as a copy boy by The Philadelphia Inquirer and worked his way up to reporter, columnist and associate editor, blazed the trail for countless protégés by lobbying for more minority hiring in newsrooms, mentoring prospective reporters and advocating more coverage of black life. “I saw how racism and the exclusion of blacks from both employment and news coverage by The Inquirer and other news agencies impacted on the events daily,” Moore recalled in his column, Urban Perspectives, in 1981. “I saw how blacks were only featured in crime stories, how stories about the masses of blacks were ignored,” he continued. “Only the extreme elements of the black community were news. Blacks never died, never married, never did the normal things that whites did.” To Moore there were no ordinary people, just people whose voices would not ordinarily have been heard.
benton.org/headlines/acel-moore-founder-black-journalists-organization | New York Times
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WILLIAM TANKERSLEY
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Bruce Weber]
William H. Tankersley, who defined broadcast standards for CBS during a volatile period of change in mores on television and in American society, doing celebrated battle with envelope pushers like Norman Lear and the Smothers Brothers, died on Feb. 5 in Scottsdale (AZ). He was 98. From the mid-1950s until 1972, when he left CBS to become head of the national Council of Better Business Bureaus, Tankersley served as the firewall between the viewers of the network’s programs and those writers, producers and advertisers who might willfully or inadvertently offend their sensibilities. He was, in effect, the network’s chief censor, though he would not have labeled his role that way. His job was not to protect the public, he said, so much as it was to guard the business and reputation of the company he worked for: “Mainly it was to make whatever came out of that tube on a CBS station be something you could be proud of,” he said. Under the Code of Practices, a set of ethical standards established in the early 1950s and voluntarily agreed to by broadcasters, things like profanity, sexual references, disparagement of religion and the depiction of drug use and drunkenness were closely monitored on all three networks. However, the standards at CBS, which was known, both admiringly and mockingly, as the Tiffany network, were considered stricter than the norm.
benton.org/headlines/william-h-tankersley-watchdog-cbs-taste-standards | New York Times
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JUDGE AND FORMER NCTA LEGAL HEAD DAN BRENNER DIES IN AUTO ACCIDENT
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Los Angeles (CA) Superior Court Judge Dan Brenner, former head of legal at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, was struck and killed by a car while crossing the street in Los Angeles Feb 15. Judge Brenner was named a judge in December 2012. He was appointed by Gov Edmund G. Brown Jr (D-CA), and had been a partner in the communications, media and entertainment practice at Hogan Lovells in Washington and a source of legal expertise on communications issues. Before joining Hogan Lovells he was a senior VP of NCTA, in charge of its legal department. He was also a former advisor to FCC Chairman Mark Fowler, an adjunct professor at the Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California, and co-author of "Cable Television: Law and Policy. Judge Brenner also served on the adjunct faculties of Georgetown University Law Center, Washington College of Law at American University, Cardozo Law School, and on the communications program faculties at UCLA, USC Annenberg, and George Washington University. Judge Brenner was vice chair and a member of the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as on the boards of the Stanford Library Visitors Board, Cable Positive, the Federal Communications Bar Foundation, Tekelec, a technology company, as well as the board of advisors of Falcon Cable Systems. He received the NCTA's President’s Award for service to the cable industry in 2009.
benton.org/headlines/judge-and-former-ncta-legal-head-dan-brenner-dies-auto-accident | Broadcasting&Cable | Multichannel News
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PRIVACY/SECURITY

WHY APPLE IS IN THIS FIGHT
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Ellen Nakashima]
[Commentary] Anyone watching the encryption debate over the past year and a half knew that this day would come. “This is the ideal case for the government to challenge industry in the encryption debate,” said Michael Sussmann, a former Justice Department official and a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm. “The facts are sympathetic to the government and present the starkest example of their need to gain access to encrypted data to protect the American public.” What the government wants Apple to do is design software to install on the phone that would block it from automatically wiping data after 10 unsuccessful tries at entering a password. That would enable the FBI to “brute force” the phone’s password — attempting tens of millions of combinations without risking deletion of the data. The government also wanted the software to permit the FBI to send passwords to the phone electronically, rather than having someone manually type them in. And the software must prevent the phone from adding delays between password attempts. The request, the Justice Department said, does not require Apple to redesign its products, to disable the phone’s encryption or open its contents. The software, it said, would operate only on that one phone. Technical experts said that all of that is possible. The question: Is it desirable?
benton.org/headlines/why-apple-historic-fight-government-over-one-iphone | Washington Post
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CONFRONTATIONAL TECH INDUSTRY
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Farhad Manjoo]
[Commentary] The battle between Apple and law enforcement officials over unlocking a terrorist’s smartphone is the culmination of a slow turning of the tables between the technology industry and the United States government. After revelations by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden in 2013 that the government both cozied up to certain tech companies and hacked into others to gain access to private data on an enormous scale, tech giants began to recognize the United States government as a hostile actor. But if the confrontation has crystallized in this latest battle, it may already be heading toward a predictable conclusion: In the long run, the tech companies are destined to emerge victorious. Apple, Google, Facebook and other companies hold most of the cards in this confrontation. They have our data, and their businesses depend on the global public’s collective belief that they will do everything they can to protect that data. Any crack in that front could be fatal for tech companies that must operate worldwide.
benton.org/headlines/apples-stance-highlights-more-confrontational-tech-industry | New York Times
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COOK’S LEGACY
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: David Pierson, Samantha Masunaga]
[Commentary] It is Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook’s hard-line stance on privacy that could define his legacy at Apple and set the tone for the way big corporations deal with big government at a time when so much of our lives unfold on the devices we use every day. How far Cook is willing to take the fight is being tested on a national level now. Challenging a court order pits the world's most formidable tech giant against its most powerful government and puts Cook in the hot seat as the voice of Silicon Valley on a long-contentious issue. "This is an American company fighting an order from an American court," said Chenxi Wang, chief strategy officer at Twistlock, a computer and network security firm. "This will absolutely have a ripple effect. Apple is now viewed as the flag bearer for protecting citizen data, and if they succeed, there will be a flood of other companies following suit." But Cook has chosen a difficult case on which to stake his position.
benton.org/headlines/tim-cooks-stance-privacy-could-define-his-apple-legacy | Los Angeles Times
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INTERNET/BROADBAND

CHARTER PITCHES BUILDOUT BONUS OF TWC DEAL
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Top Charter executives including COO John Bickham and CFO Christopher Winfrey met with Federal Communications Commission officials during the week of Feb 8 to make the case that the Charter-Time Warner Cable merger will mean faster residential broadband buildouts and upgrades. New Street Research says it believes chances of outright rejection of the deal are low as the FCC staffers hone in on possible conditions, like broadband buildouts, citing the recent meeting as one example. During the Feb. 11 meeting, according to an ex parte document, the executives argued that deal synergies means improving "investment payback horizons," which means more residential lines and faster upgrades in the first four years following approval of the deal than if there were no merger. Also representing Charter was Michael Katz, Sarin Chair Professor of Economics at the Berkeley Haas School of Business, who also argued that the deal would improve the buildout "metrics." Among the FCC staffers at the meeting were Media Bureau chief Bill Lake and general counsel Jonathan Sallet. "Both the FCC staff and the Charter team had a full complement of heavy hitters to discuss the economics of building out new residential line extensions and accelerating the upgrade of existing lines," said New Street of the meeting. "If the issue of residential line extensions was not central to the FCC’s current thinking, we doubt there would have been such a meeting focused on the topic."
benton.org/headlines/charter-pitches-buildout-bonus-twc-deal | Broadcasting&Cable
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EDUCATION

NEW SCHOOL LEADERSHIP TOOLKIT
[SOURCE: Consortium for School Networking, AUTHOR: Press release]
To improve digital equity in school systems nationwide, the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN ) launched the Digital Equity Action Toolkit for district leaders. The toolkit provides school system leaders with thoughtful strategies to address and narrow the “homework gap” in their communities. The new leadership initiative and version 1.0 toolkit provides a historic contextual background of the issue, explains the “homework gap,” details broader implications of household connectivity, and lays out steps school districts can take today. These steps include: survey the district’s connectivity and devices; engage the community; ensure sustainability through community assets; and consider outside-of-the-box solutions. In addition, the toolkit presents six approaches that will enable school districts to strengthen their leadership and spark innovation in pursuing digital equity in their communities:
Partner with local businesses on Wi-Fi access for learning;
Maximize the use of existing assets;
Seek mobile hotspot and/or affordable LTE programs;
Leverage special broadband offerings;
Repurpose educational spectrum; and
Create a mesh network.
benton.org/headlines/new-school-leadership-toolkit-advances-digital-equity-nationwide | Consortium for School Networking | download the toolkit
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TELEVISION

AT&T PHASING OUT U-VERSE
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Scott Moritz]
AT&T is phasing out the U-verse TV service as it pushes new customers to newly acquired DirecTV, a sign the company is giving up on once-heralded plans to compete head-on with cable television through telephone lines. AT&T has stopped building U-verse set-top boxes and is nudging prospective customers toward its satellite unit, which has lower hardware and programming costs. The shift is the first stage of a plan to create a “home gateway” within three years that will consolidate all AT&T services and act as a central hub to deliver video to any device. The de-emphasis of U-verse underscores AT&T’s promise to squeeze $2.5 billion in annual cost savings from its purchase of DirecTV. Current U-verse subscribers will be able to retain the service, and AT&T is even offering new promotions to those who keep it. But new customers are being directed by its marketing department to choose the satellite package.
benton.org/headlines/att-phasing-out-u-verse-it-pushes-users-toward-directv | Bloomberg
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Daily Digest

Analysis

February 2016

Vivek Wadhwa: Why Apple’s iPhone battle with the government will likely be a privacy setback

CableLabs: Symmetrical Gigabit Service for Cable Broadband on Tap

AT&T Rolls Out Landline Texting for Businesses

Alexa, Unlock the Internet

How to Do Business Journalism on the Internet and Actually Make Some Money

Why your Facebook feed is drowning in dreadful sales pitches

What being a journalist in the Middle East taught me about how censorship really works

How Netflix completely revamped recommendations for its new global audience

February 18, 2016 (Moore; Tankersley; Brenner)

Why Apple is in a historic fight with the government over one iPhone