1. Monthly archive
  2. August 2017

August 2017

Mozilla launches new effort to counter fake news

Mozilla, the creators of the popular Firefox web browser, are launching a new program to counter fake news stories. Fabricated news, made to mislead or turn a profit, is a growing problem in online communities. The U.S. intelligence community assessed that Russia used social media to propagate misinformation campaigns throughout the 2016 presidential race. "Misinformation devalues the open web," said Katharina Borchert, Mozilla chief innovation officer. "We see this as a threat to the fabric of our society."

The Mozilla Information Trust Initiative (MITI) will increase funding for research on misinformation, the first findings to be released later in 2017. The company hopes to leverage Firefox's size and reach to get data about news browsing habits. MITI will also tailor products to amplify actual news over fake news, expand an effort to increase digital news literacy and fund designers to work on software to provide on-the-fly visualizations of the problem.

Facing libel lawsuit, Techdirt takes large donations to broaden coverage

In the wake of an ongoing, expensive libel lawsuit that could drag on for years, Mike Masnick, the founder of Techdirt, announced that his website would accept more than $250,000 in donations "to further reporting on free speech." In a lengthy post, Masnick explained that the Freedom of the Press Foundation, along with other companies and organizations—including Automattic, the Charles Koch Foundation, Union Square Ventures, and a charity founded by Craigslist founder Craig Newmark—will "enable us to focus even more reporting resources on covering threats to free speech in the US and around the globe, and to tell the stories of the chilling effects created when free speech is attacked."

Masnick underscored that the money was not for the company’s legal defense, but for continued journalistic operations in this field. He acknowledged that the Koch Foundation, which has historically supported numerous conservative political causes, is an unlikely partner with some of the other donors. "[The Koch Foundation has] a history of supporting free speech efforts," Masnick said. "We reached out to folks widely across the entire political spectrum in the belief that free speech is not a partisan issue."

Watchdog files complaint alleging DNC worked with Ukraine

A watchdog group will file a complaint with the Federal Election Commission Aug 9 alleging that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) violated federal law by soliciting opposition research on the Trump campaign from a foreign government. The conservative group Foundation for Accountability & Civic Trust (FACT), launched in 2014 by former U.S. attorney Matthew Whitaker, will allege that political operative Alexandra Chalupa, in her capacity as a DNC consultant, improperly sought intelligence on President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, from Ukrainian officials.

“Federal law and Commission regulations prohibit any person from knowingly soliciting, accepting or receiving contributions or donations of money or other things of value from a foreign national,” the complaint reads. FACT alleges that Chalupa violated the ban by “knowingly soliciting” a “valuable in-kind contribution in the form of opposition research and information on a Trump campaign official from a foreign national on behalf of the Democratic National Committee.”

The real issue in the campus speech debate: The university is under assault

[Commentary] There is no doubt that public concern about the vitality of free speech and political debate on American college campuses has legitimate causes. However, the current round of attacks – from the extreme right and left — is a pretext. It is part of a broader assault on the idea of the university itself: on its social functions, on the fundamental importance of advanced knowledge and enlightened debate, on the critical role of science and expertise in public policy and on the significance of intellectuals and serious thought leaders more generally.

The time has come to defend the university vigorously, even as we insist on seeking to open it up further: to new ideas, to even more vigorous debate, to more students who have never had the opportunity for advanced education, to engagement with the world, and to the public more generally for whom the idea that college is a public good needs stressing, and demonstrating, today more than ever.

[Nicholas B. Dirks is former chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley.]

FCC OKs More Forward Auction Spectrum Applications

The Federal Communications Commission has accepted another batch of applications from winning bidders in the forward portion of the broadcast incentive auction. Those are bidders for broadcast spectrum being reclaimed for wireless broadband. The big players' applications have already been accepted and the licenses granted, including the biggest bidder, T-Mobile, but this is the third batch of applications to be accepted, with more to come. Petitions to deny the applications are due by Aug. 21, with oppositions to those petitions due Aug. 28 and replies due Sept. 5. The granted applications are from Bluewater Wireless, Gold Spectrum LLC, James Hulce, James McCotter, Nex-Tech Wireless, Nova Wireless, PBP License Group, Pioneer Telephone Service, Rural Telephone Service, Sagebrush Cellular, SI Wireless, Spectrum Financial Partners, and Tradewinds Wireless Holdings.

FBI conducted predawn raid of former Trump campaign chairman Manafort’s home

FBI agents raided the Alexandria (VA) home of President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman late in July, using a search warrant to seize documents and other materials, according to people familiar with the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Federal agents appeared at Paul Manafort’s home without advance warning in the predawn hours of July 26, the day after he met voluntarily with the staff for the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The search warrant was wide-ranging and FBI agents working with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III departed the home with various records. Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Manafort, confirmed that agents executed a warrant at one of the political consultant’s homes and that Manafort cooperated with the search. Manafort has been voluntarily producing documents to congressional committees investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. The search warrant indicates investigators may have argued to a federal judge they had reason to believe Manafort could not be trusted to turn over all records in response to a grand jury subpoena. It could also have been intended to send a message to President Trump’s former campaign chairman that he should not expect gentle treatment or legal courtesies from Mueller’s team.

Media scholar on Trump TV: “This is Orwellian, and it’s happening right now, right here”

A Q&A with Tom Rosenstiel, an author, researcher, media critic, and the current executive director of the American Press Institute.

“What makes Trump different,” Rosenstiel said, “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.”

Asked, "Is this the future of political media in this country? Where candidates circumnavigate the press and peddle their own propaganda via social media?" Rosenstiel said, "I hope not. The current pattern is more media. There are more and more channels, more and more sites, more and more voices; we're more segmented than ever. The traditional press has not disappeared, but it's competing with more and more alternatives. I think the risk here is that everyone is in their own narrow reality and we don't have a common set of facts and a common ground on which to govern — to the degree that an independent press that is committed to facts and verification diminishes, that encourages this pseudo-reality in which everyone is operating with a set of facts that are self-serving and self-fulfilling but completely unreal. So the risk of losing an independent press, even if that press is very heterogeneous, is that you lose an institution that is dedicated to getting the facts right. Whether they're partisan or not, they're at least dedicated to getting the facts right. If we lose that, we're in a very dangerous place."

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