Analysis

As Internet-based distributors move up and down the stack to become vertically integrated platforms with a preferred suite of affiliated content, there is a growing concern among policymakers that innovation among independent content creators and websites may be threatened. More fundamentally, the Internet is not one thing—it is many things, and our current regulatory regimes are struggling to address that complexity. These new platforms give rise to potential conflicts of interest, in which it might pay for a vertically-integrated platform owner to sacrifice some profits (if any) in its distribution division in order to support an affiliated (or favored, third-party) application.

This essay focuses on identifying and fixing this potential regulatory gap when crafting a “net neutrality” policy—a set of rules or standards designed to spur innovation at the “edge” of the Internet by preventing Internet service providers (ISPs) from engaging in discriminatory conduct. But the essay could just as easily be directed at the powerful online platforms wielded by Amazon, Facebook, or Google. The applicability of this remedy to other parts of the Internet is natural, not because market power is paramount there (though it certainly exists), but because there is a large enough threat to innovation in adjacent markets to online shopping, social media, and search, respectively.

[Singer is Principal, Economists Inc., and Senior Fellow, George Washington Institute of Public Policy. The author has served as a consultant to both ISPs and independent cable networks in regulatory matters.]

[Commentary] In a perplexing dance toward consensus, left and right have united to pour vinegar on Sinclair Broadcasting Group’s effort to add Tribune Media’s 42 television stations to the 173 it already owns. You’d think that Sinclair—which hikes on the conservative side of the news by forcing its stations to air commentaries by former Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn and other right-tilting segments (“Terror Alert Desk”)—would be cheered by its fellow media ideologues. But no. Newsmax, One America News Network and Glenn Beck’s the Blaze have joined with the lefties from Public Knowledge, Common Cause, Free Press and Media Matters for America to decry the $3.9 billion acquisition. The opposition doesn’t stop there. Such businesses as DISH Network and T-Mobile have decanted their protests, too, demanding that the Federal Communications Commission block the deal, as have broadcast trade associations.

The lefty opposition against Sinclair actually seems to be an argument against media diversity and for media homogeneity. Nowhere on television—not even on Fox-owned stations—is the conservative point of view pursued as aggressively as it is at Sinclair. If rejecting what other journalists are doing and following a unique viewpoint isn't the mark of media diversity, I don't know what is. If the left truly wished death upon Sinclair, it would urge the FCC to change ownership rules so that big broadcasters with different news “philosophies”—ABC (Disney), NBC (Comcast), and CBS—could buy more stations. But the left remains too stitched up in its 1950s thinking about consolidation to advocate that. Might Sinclair’s fight for Tribune’s stations turn out to be a fool’s bargain? For the media diversification reason chronicled above, the conventional television business model has passed its golden years. In 2015, the Bernstein research outfit predicted a “period of prolonged structural decline” for the television industry as viewers continue to defect from ad-supported outlets to on-demand services like Netflix and Hulu. Maybe instead of discouraging Sinclair from making the deal, the company’s foes and competitors should encourage them to close it.

While the Internet seems ubiquitous, digital divides remain, particularly across incomes. In the US, adults making less than $30,000 per year are significantly less likely to use any type of digital device and to have broadband Internet access in their home. The 2015 Open Internet Order was adopted, in part, to reduce the divide by expediting broadband deployment and removing obstacles to the market.

In their recent work “The Digital Divide and Other Economic Considerations for Network Neutrality,” authors Michelle Connolly, Clement Lee, and Renhao Tan question whether or not the 2015 OIO is likely to help bridge the digital divide. They argue that despite its rhetoric, the 2015 OIO did not properly consider its effect on the digital divide. In fact, net neutrality rules may depress investment, exacerbate the digital divide, and decrease the quality and diversity of Internet content.

Sinclair Broadcast Group may have federal regulators on its side about a possible mega TV-station-group merger. But its business partners -- and competitors -- may give it a harder time. Cue 21st Century Fox. The Fox Broadcasting Network reportedly wants to change its affiliate associations with 26 Sinclair TV stations -- and strike a deal with a smaller TV station group, ION Media Networks.

Why? Insiders say a potential $3.9 billion merger between Sinclair and Tribune Media could be competitive trouble for Fox-owned TV stations -- as well as other Fox affiliates where Sinclair has other network affiliate deals. Is Fox short-sighted? Fox -- like all TV networks -- depends on the steady local TV promotion, which Sinclair provides. Dealing with ION could just be a negotiation ploy with Sinclair, perhaps to extract a far better Fox affiliation agreement. But if that doesn’t work, Fox might do what Sinclair is doing: Buy more TV stations. Perhaps ION stations.

For Internet trolls, the week of July 24 may as well have been Christmas. On July 25, Judge James Cacheris of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia handed down a decision stating that public officials may not “block” their constituents on social media. The case, which will influence a similar case filed by the Knight First Amendment Institute against President Trump, involved a dispute between defendant Phyllis Randall, chairman of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, and plaintiff Brian Davison.

The facts allege that Randall banned Davison from her Facebook page titled “Chair Phyllis J. Randall” after Davison published comments during an online forum that, in Randall’s view, consisted of “slanderous” remarks about “people’s family members” and “kickback money” (if the facts seem confusing or incomplete, it’s not just you — neither party could recall the precise contents of the deleted comment). Although it is difficult to contest that Randall was acting in her official capacity, the court’s conclusion that a social media platform is analogous to a public forum is ill-conceived.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, National Rifle Association head Wayne LaPierre gave a remarkable speech during which he offered up a vast, loosely aggregated opposition that was the new threat for gun owners to fear: “leftists,” anarchists, criminals and, of course, “national media machine.” “For the first time, we also face an enemy utterly dedicated to destroy not just our country, but also Western civilization,” he said — not of foreign invasion, but of liberals and the media.

The organization and its online television network, NRATV, has also made ads specifically targeting media outlets, including The Washington Post and, this week, the New York Times. The NRA is spending money to pitch the media in particular as a threat to gun owners.

[Commentary] Leaking the transcript of a presidential call to a foreign leader is unprecedented, shocking, and dangerous. It is vitally important that a president be able to speak confidentially—and perhaps even more important that foreign leaders understand that they can reply in confidence.

Aug 3’s leak to The Washington Post of President Trump’s calls with the president of Mexico and the prime minister of Australia will reverberate around the world. No leader will again speak candidly on the phone to Washington (DC)—at least for the duration of this presidency, and perhaps for longer. If these calls can be leaked, any call can be leaked—and no leader dare say anything to the president of the United States that he or she would not wish to read in the news at home.

[David Frum is a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush.]

[Commentary] First, it is shocking to see presidential conversations released in this way. Some in the executive branch, as Anthony Scaramucci aptly put it, are intent on protecting the country from President Trump. This is a good thing, by the way. White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly has obviously failed to plug the flood leaks, and one wonders whether a leak this egregious is meant to signal that the White House will remain dysfunctional.

And that brings us to the next point: Trump is frighteningly obsessed with himself and his image to such an extent that he cannot fulfill the role of commander in chief. Third, President Trump’s narcissism leaves him open to flattery and threats (to reveal embarrassing material, for example). That’s the worry in the Russia investigation — namely, that Vladimir Putin has “something” on Trump, which compels Trump to act in ways inimical to U.S. interests. President Trump’s interests are paramount, so a cagey adversary can easily manipulate him.

[Commentary] To keep things straight, “open internet” is synonymous with network neutrality, and “paid prioritization” is another way of saying “fast lane” for the internet. Foes of paid prioritization say it follows that if someone pays for a fast lane, then all who don’t pay are relegated to a slow lane — or worse. For two days during the week before the end of the comment period, news reports surfaced that Verizon Wireless — Verizon is one of the United States’ largest internet service providers — was intentionally slowing down video streaming services on its customers’ data plans. Open-internet advocates call that throttling. Verizon’s definition: optimization, adding it was just a network test that should not have disrupted their customers’ internet experience.

Steve Bannon, the chief strategist to President Donald Trump, believes Facebook and Google should be regulated as public utilities, according to an anonymously sourced report in The Intercept. This means they would get treated less like a book publisher and more like a telephone company. The government would shorten their leash, treating them as privately owned firms that provide an important public service.

The plan is a prototypical alleged Bannonism: iconoclastic, anti-establishment, and unlikely to result in meaningful policy change....Americans will have to examine the most fraught tensions in our mixed system, as we weigh the balance of local power and national power, the deliberate benefits of central planning with the mindless wisdom of the free market, and the many conflicting meanings of freedom.