March 2019

Despite carriers selling 911 location data, FCC ignores privacy in new rules

Smartphone 911 location data is getting more precise, but the Federal Communications Commission isn't updating its privacy rules despite carriers' history of selling their customers' location data. The FCC is scheduled to vote on a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FNPRM) requiring collection of more precise location data. The data would identify a person's floor in a multi-story building when someone calls 911 and is being referred to as "Z-axis" data.

Journalists Struggle to Understand Americans' Relationship to News

“The four elements of literacy—the ability to find, understand, create and act on information—are part of the ‘new literacies’ of the modern era: information literacy, digital literacy, media literacy and news literacy. … No one is born with these literacies. Education matters,” writes the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication’s Eric Newton for the Knight Commission on Trust, Media, and Democracy. "Whose job is it to help a community understand news?” Journalism is an inextricable component of a healthy democracy.