“What makes Trump different is that he’s systematically trying to delegitimize the news as an institution because they won’t cover him the way he wants to be covered. That’s what’s different here.”
-- Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute
You can add Altice to the growing list of companies trying to figure out a way to buy Charter Communciations. The French telecom giant and its US cable subsidiary, Altice USA, are working on an offer to buy Charter, but have not yet brought a purchase proposal to Charter or its advisors, apparently.
There's no guarantee that Altice will engage, though the prospects seem likely. Altice and its founder Patrick Drahi have long had ambitions to expand in the U.S., and with SoftBank's recent interest in making an offer to buy Charter, Drahi has decided to see if he can compete. Altice has bankers and lawyers working on a bid for Charter. But like SoftBank, it faces significant hurdles in crafting a deal that would meet shareholders' expectations on price while not being replete with the stock of the acquiring company, which in this case would be the far smaller Altice USA.
As a media correspondent for The Times, I cover the intersection of journalism and politics, a juncture that has seen its share of pileups in 2017. The president labeled the mainstream media “the enemy of the American people.” The White House briefing turned into a daily grudge match over the nature of transparency and truth. Alarms are sounding about an erosion of press freedoms once thought sacrosanct in a democracy. The White House press secretary plays a central role in that debate.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who at 34 is among the youngest people to hold the title, must manage the message of her administration and liaise with dozens of reporters, while also acting as a frequent vessel of President Donald Trump’s anti-media ire. “I’ve grown up with the press, in the press,” she told me, referring to her upbringing as the daughter of Mike Huckabee, the Republican former governor of Arkansas and a two-time presidential candidate. “I’ve never seen the level of hostility that this press corps has to the president.”
The New York Times has issued a correction after publishing a climate report on Aug 8 it said was "leaked" to the paper by a scientist -- only to learn the report had been online for months. Under the front-page sub-headline, "Fears of Suppression," the article claimed the draft report had "not been made public" by the Trump administration but "a copy of it was obtained by The New York Times." The report was available on the Internet Archive non-profit website at the start of the year, however. It was also available on The National Academies of Sciences Public Access Records Office website, which is accessible to the public. The Times issued a correction on page A17 of its Aug 9 edition. "An article on Tuesday about a sweeping federal climate change report referred incorrectly to the availability of the report," the paper wrote. "While it was not widely publicized, the report was uploaded by the nonprofit Internet Archive in January; it was not first made public by The New York Times."
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders slammed the Times for not reaching out to the White House press office for comment before publishing the Tuesday report. "It’s very disappointing, yet entirely predictable to learn The New York Times would write off a draft report without first verifying its contents with the White House or any of the federal agencies directly involved with climate and environmental policy," Huckabee Sanders said.
[Commentary] More than 15 million comments have been filed with the Federal Communications Commission on its Restoring Internet Freedom docket, which focuses on the concept of net neutrality, and specifically Title II regulations imposed in 2015 under the previous administration. While this colossal number includes many sentiments – including an unsettling number of foreign and some 6 million fake comments – it does not contain significant representation from poor, minority and senior Americans. Media and communications scholars have documented that online activism is the province of the digital elite and largely aligns with race and class. Herein lies an unsettling problem.
"Digital democracy" has been promoted to enable underrepresented consumers to become more politically involved. This seems intuitive, but the reality is that digitization can, if anything, exacerbate the problem of these individuals not participating. The reality is that Title II ignores and hurts underserved communities. It prohibits a free market for data which allows these individuals to enjoy free and reduced price content and offerings. It has cost the nation some $35 billion annually in lost participation from content-side actors and advertisers which would otherwise support internet access to these groups. It is also responsible for deterring the creation of some 750,000 jobs.
[Roslyn Layton is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute’s Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy.]
While the Internet seems ubiquitous, digital divides remain, particularly across incomes. In the US, adults making less than $30,000 per year are significantly less likely to use any type of digital device and to have broadband Internet access in their home. The 2015 Open Internet Order was adopted, in part, to reduce the divide by expediting broadband deployment and removing obstacles to the market.
In their recent work “The Digital Divide and Other Economic Considerations for Network Neutrality,” authors Michelle Connolly, Clement Lee, and Renhao Tan question whether or not the 2015 OIO is likely to help bridge the digital divide. They argue that despite its rhetoric, the 2015 OIO did not properly consider its effect on the digital divide. In fact, net neutrality rules may depress investment, exacerbate the digital divide, and decrease the quality and diversity of Internet content.
Palantir had been selling its data storage, analysis, and collaboration software to police departments nationwide on the basis of rock-solid security. “Palantir Law Enforcement provides robust, built-in privacy and civil liberties protections, including granular access controls and advanced data retention capabilities,” its website reads. The scale of Palantir’s implementation, the type, quantity and persistence of the data it processes, and the unprecedented access that many thousands of people have to that data all raise significant concerns about privacy, equity, racial justice, and civil rights. But until now, we haven’t known very much about how the system works, who is using it, and what their problems are. And neither Palantir nor many of the police departments that use it are willing to talk about it.
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