Carmen Scurato

Public interest commenters, including public safety officials, overwhelmingly agreed with Free Press’s assessment that the Federal Communications Commission’s misguided repeal of Net Neutrality and its authority over broadband internet access service (“BIAS”) harms the Lifeline program, pole attachment regulation, and public safety. These commenters also overwhelmingly agreed that the best remedy for such harms would be for the Commission to once again correctly classify broadband as a Title II service protected by strong open internet rules.

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed a package of fatally flawed plans that would fundamentally undercut Lifeline. May 15's FCC oversight hearing is an opportunity for Congress to hold the agency accountable for its disastrous proposals. 

The report condemns the Federal Communications Commission for failing to adequately respond to the September 2017 hurricanes, which knocked out 95 percent of all cell sites, 97 percent of radio stations and all local television stations. The report calls out the agency’s failure to hold wired and wireless carriers to account for neglecting to build resilient networks or respond in a timely or sufficient fashion to restore communications to the islands’ residents.

A group of direct service providers, advocates, public interest groups and a Lifeline subscriber met separately with advisors to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Pai, Commissioner Rosenworcel and her advisor, advisors to Commissioners Starks, Carr and O’Rielly, and Wireline Competition Bureau staff on April 18, 2019 to discuss the impacts of the 2017 Lifeline proposals and to request the FCC terminate the proceeding.

Internet platforms like Facebook, Google and Twitter use core algorithms to intentionally gather likeminded people and feed them self-validating content that elicits powerful reactions. Combine this with the platforms’ ability to finely target messaging and ads and you’ve created a potent formula for the virulent spread of disinformation, propaganda and hate. In response, more than three-dozen racial justice and civil rights organizations—including our group, Free Press—have spent more than a year evaluating the role of technology in fomenting hate.

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission is pushing forward with changes to the Lifeline program, which would hamper recovery efforts and cut off hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans — who are also US citizens — from vital telecommunications services. The Trump administration’s FCC has proposed changes that would sharply alter the purpose and scope of the program, further antagonizing hurricane victims who are still struggling to rebuild. Before the catastrophic 2017 hurricane season, over 500,000 island households relied on the Lifeline program to stay connected.

The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) is prepared to seek judicial review of the Federal Communications Commission’s Network Neutrality repeal to ensure that Latinos and other marginalized communities continue to have access to an open Internet.

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission’s record is missing key evidence: over 50,000 Net Neutrality consumer complaints submitted to the FCC between 2015 and 2017.

The National Hispanic Media Coalition filed a letter on November 20, 2017 to submit an analysis of open internet consumer complaints and related documents produced in response to its FOIA requests. The report is entitled “Consumer Perspectives on Barriers to Accessing the Open Internet,” was commissioned by NHMC and is based solely on the consumer complaints and related documents that have been released by the Federal Communications Commission to date.

This is exactly the time that the public is looking to build trust with the media, fostering a productive dialogue that supports accurate coverage representative of diverse voices, and we are disappointed that the first FCC vote of 2017 deprives Americans of meaningful information about the scope of their community’s feedback. In allowing stations to eliminate the only publicly accessible means to understand how audiences across the country are responding to commercial broadcast coverage, the FCC does a tremendous disservice to all who seek to support journalism that fulfills the public interest obligation it holds.

We are very concerned that continuing the current practice of putting letters and emails from the public in a file has been deemed too burdensome a task in the face of the urgent need for media accountability. Contrary to arguments submitted by FCC commissioners and industry representatives, the use of social media to find or report issues is not an adequate replacement for viewing the full breadth of input to commercial broadcast stations that are often mailed or emailed. This insufficient reply is especially more concerning when a full third of Americans–disproportionately Latinos and other people of color, lower-income and rural Americans–lack home broadband to submit feedback or view the extent of concerns submitted by their neighbors online.