November 2018

CNN president Jeff Zucker, the guy who first brought our president to the small screen when he green-lighted The Apprentice in 2004 while running NBC, had arguably schooled Donald Trump in the art of reality television. Halfway through President Trump’s first term, his instincts remain just as acute. If Fox News represents President Trump’s base and MSNBC has become a friendly platform for the resistance, CNN is the arena where both sides show up for cantankerous battle. “On Fox, you rarely hear from people who don’t support Trump,” Zucker said.

Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR) released a discussion draft of sweeping new legislation, Consumer Data Protection Act, that would empower consumers to control their personal information, create radical transparency into how corporations use and share their data, and impose harsh fines and prison terms for executives at corporations that misuse Americans’ data.

Freedom House, a US-based pro-democracy think tank, releases an annual report that analyzes the amount of internet freedom in countries around the world, and assigns a score to each country. While America still has a high level of internet freedom, the loss of net neutrality protections, privacy laws, and the merging of major telecom companies caused its rating to drop in 2018. “It is depressing but not unexpected,” said Josh Tabish, the Ford/MDF Technology Exchange Fellow at Fight for the Future.