Lauren Frayer

As the media class struggles to understand an election result few foresaw, some have blamed a quirk of modern technology. So media and tech companies are pivoting, selling us a whole suite of offerings aimed at bursting the bubbles they helped to create.

In his manifesto, Mark Zuckerberg spoke of the need to grow local news outlets (which have seen their prospects plummet even further as Facebook tightens its grip as a leading source of news) and present people with a range of perspectives. Whether those sentiments make their way into every feed remains to be seen — after all, Facebook became an internet superpower by serving up easy, compulsively clickable content. Some Americans are interested in peeking outside their filter bubbles right now, which gives tech companies an incentive to cater to their desires. Will they feel the same way when they’re winning again?

CNN President Jeff Zucker said President Trump is obsessed with his cable news network, spending "his days and nights watching it” despite constantly attacking it in public. "A lot of this is red meat for his base," Zucker said. "He claims that CNN is unwatchable, but the only way he knows that is because he's watching it obsessively. We know that he spends his days and nights watching CNN." CNN has been targeted as “fake news” by Trump more than any other broadcast news outlet.

President Donald Trump's latest attempt to stop the damaging leaks coming from the White House has been leaked to the press. Current and former officials told said that in an effort reduce leaks to the media, the White House has limited access to its classified computer systems.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also dedicated his first senior staff meeting in Feb to underscoring that he will not tolerate leaks to the media. Trump's administration is increasingly committed to reducing the amount of leaks coming from the White House in recent months. The flurry of leaked documents and reports has undermined Trump's key policy positions, including his ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries. Some officials also told the news agency that they fear a witch hunt is on for a Department of Homeland Security official who leaked the draft intelligence report to the press.

[Commentary] Call it the revenge of the reporters over the pundits. Feb 28 was a low point for “the media” — if such a multi-headed beast can be described in those two words — as cable-news talking heads gushed over President Trump’s address to Congress. But as if to say that not all media are created equal, along came two blockbuster stories from two longtime rival newspapers.

First, on March 1, with an 8:01 news alert, the New York Times dropped its triple-byline blockbuster: that the Obama administration had scattered a trail of bread crumbs, evidently so that contacts between Trump’s associates and the Russians would not be lost to a coverup by the new administration. Then, with a 9:04 p.m. news alert, The Washington Post published a shocker on the same general subject: that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had met with the Russian ambassador to the United States twice and failed to disclose that during his Senate confirmation hearings. Because of dogged reporting, and to some extent on intelligence-community leaks that Trump has found so outrageous, both stories hit hard.

“FAKE NEWS,” a Twitter post declared. “Prejudice-based,” another said. “Cleverly orchestrated lies,” a news article asserted. President Donald Trump’s harangues against the American news media appear to have inspired a new genre of commentary in China’s state media, whose propagandists spiced up social media posts and news articles with Trumpian flourishes this week. People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, mimicked Mr. Trump’s characteristic bluster — and his fondness for capital letters — on March 3 in denouncing Western news coverage of a Chinese lawyer and human rights advocate who said he had been tortured.

In a study released March 3, the Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Technology Research and Investigation (OTech) reports that most major online businesses are using proper email authentication technology to prevent phishing e-mails, but few of these businesses are taking full advantage of the latest technologies to combat phishing.

Phishing is a type of online scam that targets consumers by sending them an e-mail that appears to be from a well-known source such as an internet service provider, a bank, or a mortgage company. It asks the consumer to provide personal identifying information, and then the scammer uses the information to open new accounts or invade the consumer’s existing accounts.

The California Supreme Court ruled that state and local officials must disclose public records even if those "writings" are held on private devices or accounts. The City of San Jose and the County of Santa Clara had argued that such records could be exempted from the California Public Records Act. The case dates back to 2009, when Ted Smith, a local environment activist, filed a public records request about various San Jose officials' requests concerning local development efforts. When records came back that did not include materials from personal devices or accounts, he sued.

The state Supreme Court was unequivocal in its conclusion: "CPRA and the Constitution strike a careful balance between public access and personal privacy. This case concerns how that balance is served when documents concerning official business are created or stored outside the workplace. The issue is a narrow one: Are writings concerning the conduct of public business beyond CPRA's reach merely because they were sent or received using a non governmental account? Considering the statute's language and the important policy interests it serves, the answer is no. Employees' communications about official agency business may be subject to CPRA regardless of the type of account used in their preparation or transmission."

Teletext, an information service for transmitting text and graphics to a television set, was, 30 years ago, slated to revolutionize information retrieval. Back then, when the average media consumer couldn't envision reading script on a screen, well-moneyed news services were exploring teletext as an ultramodern avenue for on-demand, 24/7 news delivery to living rooms across the globe. Immediate access to stock quotes and international headlines was a sci-fi caprice that has today become a law of nature. Absentminded Yelping and indifferent glances at New York Times push notifications may now be taken-for-granted byproducts of the digital revolution. But in 1974, this user-to-information proximity was practically unfathomable, an anomaly seven years before IBM introduced its Personal Computer, the first computer of a size and price that was attractive for individual use. Teletext, according to those who worked with it, struck technologists and journalists alike as a diviner of the tech utopia to come.

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai delivered his first major address on the global stage at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Chairman Pai outlined a policy agenda aimed at bringing faster and cheaper broadband to all Americans: promoting infrastructure investment, fostering innovation, and expanding next-generation networks. The key ingredient, from Pai’s perspective, is a light-touch regulatory approach. The rhetoric around net neutrality often muddies the issue. An example can be found in Pai’s speech. He said, “Going forward, the FCC will not focus on denying Americans free data or issuing heavy-handed decrees inspired by the distant past. Instead, we will seek to advance the networks of the future and the innovative new products and services that take advantage of those networks. And as we do so, we will preserve a free and open Internet.” This raises questions: Can Pai be logically consistent by supporting a “free and open Internet” while scaling back the legal, Title II protections and enabling paid prioritization by ISPs? What do he mean by “free and open Internet”? How does he plan on enforcing net neutrality rules ? Since Pai supports sponsored data programs, does he also support Comcast throttling home connections? Or charging edge providers premium prices for an Internet fast lane?

Vice President Mike Pence routinely used a private email account to conduct public business as governor of Indiana, at times discussing sensitive matters and homeland security issues. He communicated via his personal AOL account with top advisers on topics ranging from security gates at the governor’s residence to the state’s response to terror attacks across the globe.

In one email, Pence’s top state homeland security adviser relayed an update from the FBI regarding the arrests of several men on federal terror-related charges. Cyber-security experts say the emails raise concerns about whether such sensitive information was adequately protected from hackers, given that personal accounts like Pence's are typically less secure than government email accounts. In fact, Pence's personal account was hacked in the summer of 2016. Furthermore, advocates for open government expressed concerns about transparency because personal emails aren't immediately captured on state servers that are searched in response to public records requests.

Pence's office in Washington said: "Similar to previous governors, during his time as Governor of Indiana, Mike Pence maintained a state email account and a personal email account. As Governor, Mr. Pence fully complied with Indiana law regarding email use and retention. Government emails involving his state and personal accounts are being archived by the state consistent with Indiana law, and are being managed according to Indiana’s Access to Public Records Act.”