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  2. February 2017

February 2017

Democratic Governors left out of traditional White House press conference

Democratic governors and some Republican governors who attended a meeting with President Donald Trump on Nov 27 were excluded from the traditional bipartisan press conference outside the West Wing. The nation's governors, in town for an annual conference that by tradition includes an audience with the president, visited the White House the morning of Nov 27. President Trump told governors his administration would streamline regulations, repeal the Affordable Care Act and increase spending on defense and infrastructure. After the event, Republican governors, including Gov Matt Bevin (R-KY) and Mary Fallin (R-OK), met reporters outside the White House. No Democrats were present.

Jared Leopold, a spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association, said that Democratic governors who tried to meet reporters at the "Pebble Beach" media area outside the White House were sent elsewhere. "Some of our gov's planned to go to Pebble Beach to talk to reporters and were not able to," Leopold said.

Trump Has Declared War On The Press. Media Should Come To The Battlefield

[Commentary] The White House’s petulant decision to ban several major news outlets from a media gaggle with press secretary Sean Spicer ignited justifiable outrage among journalists. And the outcry was noticeably bipartisan. “This is an attempt to bully the press by using access as a weapon to manipulate coverage,” warned Bret Stephens, the deputy editorial page director for The Wall Street Journal. Now that outrage needs to be institutionalized. It needs to be backed up by the power and prestige of the country’s largest news organizations. In other words, it’s time for institutions to take collective action and fight back.

Stop Treating Broadband Like a Utility

[Commentary] The question then before policymakers is actually this: Must we harness our broadband infrastructure to the yoke of 20th century Title II regulations designed for public utilities in order to maintain an open Internet? The only reasonable answer to that question is no.

Regulating broadband under utility-style Title II regulations crafted decades ago puts these consumer benefits and the robust investment that make them possible at risk. This in turn undermines the goal we all share—making more of broadband’s opportunities available to all Americans. Essential to making broadband work for everyone is ensuring everyone’s broadband is strong, open and growing swiftly for us all.

[Diane Smith is the interim chair of Mobile Future]

Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Wednesday, March 8, 2017
3:30 p.m.–5:00 p.m.
https://itif.org/events/2017/03/08/state-us-government-websites?mc_cid=d...

The U.S. government operates roughly 6,000 websites on over 400 government domains. These websites are one of the most important ways that citizens, businesses, and others get information and access services from federal agencies. But how well are federal agencies meeting best practices? In a new report, ITIF evaluates nearly 300 of the most popular federal websites, ranks them across a variety of metrics including performance, security, design, and makes recommendations for how the federal government can improve.

Join ITIF for a presentation of the report’s findings as well as a panel discussion on how the new administration can improve the federal digital services.

Speakers

Daniel Castro
Vice President
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Moderator

John Landwehr
Vice President and Public Sector CTO
Adobe

Alan McQuinn
Research Analyst
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Presenter

Chris Neff
Vice President of Marketing
NIC


George W. Bush critiques Trump on free press

Former President George W. Bush rarely weighs in on current political events, but on Feb 27 he offered some of his most pointed critiques of President Donald Trump's statements and policies. “I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy,” Bush said. “We need an independent media to hold people like me to account." "Power can be very addictive and it can be corrosive and it's important for the media to call to account people who abuse power, whether it be here or elsewhere,” he added. Bush noted that during his presidency, he sought to persuade people like Russian President Vladimir Putin to respect a free press. “It's kind of hard to tell others to have an independent free press when we're not willing to have one ourselves,” Bush said.

Atlantic Editor to Journalists: Don't spin 'out of control' covering Trump

Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, says journalists covering President Trump should not spin "out of control.” "The danger is that [journalists] spin ourselves out of control out of anxiety or fear or whatever you want to call it," Goldberg said. "But all that this moment requires is a doubling down of our basic commitment to a fact-based discourse."

The comments came before the White House barred several news outlets from a question-and-answer briefing with press secretary Sean Spicer on Feb 24. "We're not supposed to be the resistance. We're not supposed to be the opposition," said Goldberg. "We're supposed to tell the truth about what's happening in any given moment and in any given place. And let's just do that."

Why Conservatives Love Trump's Attacks On Journalists

While some conservative media figures are speaking out against the Trump administration’s efforts to manipulate coverage and damage the institution of the press, many more can’t get enough of the way he treats journalists with utter contempt and grinds them into the dirt. And those opinions are mimicked by their audiences. Seventy-three percent of Republican voters approve of the way he talks about the media, according to a recent poll. Nearly four out of five trust President Trump more than the press to tell the truth.

But those views are wildly out of step with the rest of the American public, which overwhelmingly disapproves of Trump’s conduct and trusts him less than the media. This divide is the result of extremely successful efforts by Republican activists, politicians, and conservative media outlets to convince conservatives that the mainstream press is liberal and deceitful and that only avowed right-wing sources can be trusted to provide the facts.

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