Editorial

[Commentary] Fakes in the world of print publishing are relatively easy to discredit if not always to spot. Inconsistencies, errors, and—perhaps most importantly—widely accessible originals, make the job of persuasively forging content a significant challenge. In digital publishing, however, even maintaining original content cannot be taken for granted.

Being able to identify genuine digital material is “a huge issue,” says David Schulz, a prominent First Amendment lawyer and director of the Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School. Given the increasing sophistication of fake digital content, Schulz asks, “How do you prove something was ‘out there’? How do you prove it’s authentic?” If reputable news organizations digitally sign their content, it would increase the difficulty of creating fake news by raising doubts about material that isn’t similarly authenticated. Likewise, developing such a standard would support archives that can withstand attempts to reauthor history. Although the technical challenge is substantial, it’s also one that is important to take on, as new organizations strive to rebuild public trust and set their work apart from that of content mills and fake news factories.

[Susan McGregor is Assistant Director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and Assistant Professor at Columbia School of Journalism.]

[Commentary] President Donald Trump’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, has repeatedly signaled that he wants to dismantle the net-neutrality protections that were put in place during the Obama years after a massive campaign by democracy advocates, consumer groups, and defenders of a free and open Internet. If Pai’s FCC votes later this summer for that dismantlement, the future of personal communications, education, commerce, economic arrangements, and democracy itself will be radically altered.

The fight over net neutrality is about much more than the fight over whether telecommunications companies will be able to create “fast lanes” for paying content from corporations and billionaire-funded politicians while relegating the essential informational sharing of civil society to “slow lanes” on the periphery of what was supposed to be “the information superhighway.” Because our lives are now so digital, and because they are becoming so automated, the fight over net neutrality is really the fight over the whole of the future. It comes down to a simple question: Will that future be defined by civic and democratic values? Or will it defined by commercial and entertainment values?

[Commentary] We’re still picking ourselves off the floor from all the laughing we did when AT&T issued a press release announcing that it was joining the “Day of Action for preserving and advancing the open internet.” Here are some things AT&T could actually do to defend Net Neutrality and the open internet:

1) Quit trying to co-opt the terms “Net Neutrality” and “open internet.”
2) Actually support real Net Neutrality.
3) Get your CEO on the record in support of Title II.
4) Quit suing the FCC over the 2015 Open Internet Order.
5) Stop sending all your lobbyists to lobby against Net Neutrality.
6) In fact, leave Congress out of it altogether.
7) Stop lying.
8) Specifically stop lying about investment.
9) Abandon your merger with Time Warner.
10) If you won’t do that, can you at least pledge to extend John Oliver’s contract when you own HBO? That’s our guy.

[Commentary] Chattanooga (TN) had the right idea when it requested and received Federal Communications Commission approval to expand broadband service – offered through its municipal utility provider, EPB – into neighboring Bradley County, an area overlooked by commercial providers. Unfortunately, that plan was sidelined in 2016 when Tennessee turned it into a state’s rights issue and successfully contested the approval in federal court.

After the ruling, state attorney general Herbert Slatery reiterated the case “was not about access to broadband,” but rather about preventing the federal government from exercising power it didn’t have. Meanwhile, many rural communities continue to lose out, either unserved or underserved by broadband providers. During a stop in Memphis a year ago, Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke outlined what the real goal here should be. “Broadband now is an essential part of people’s lives,” he said. “The highways and the roads that we drive on are what allow goods and services to transport at quick speed and grow the economy of our country. It’s the same thing with the internet. And everybody needs access to it.”

[Commentary] Remember when we used to obsess about every presidential tweet? When every story was about us? When Donald Trump’s war with the media was, really, the only thing that mattered? We need to stop. Stop reporting on every tweet with the volume of a declaration of war; stop letting the president and his staff frame every misstep and scandal as a media story; stop treating Trump’s war with the press as if it’s the most important thing happening in this country. It’s not. Our response to each of Trump’s media-bashing episodes comes off as if we’re hearing them for the first time. Can you believe he said that? Could this be the thing that finally does him in? Does he have no respect for the First Amendment? The answer, of course, is that he doesn’t respect the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech.

The media’s impulse, which is understandable, is to keep the focus on his threats to the press, and not to let them become normalized. But we have reached the point at which the media response has become counterproductive and even beneficial to the president and his lackeys in the White House, who have turned the West Wing into a megaphone for Trump’s faux media war and reporters in the White House briefing room into photo-op foils. It’s amazing, and absurd, that we turn over live television to the press secretary to air the administration’s latest broadside against the press, and let senior administration officials go off the record to attack our own outlets. Every time President Trump fires a shot in his war against the media, there’s an opportunity for a more serious, nuanced argument about why everyone benefits from a free and vigorous press: Airing a president and his policies to open discussion and scrutiny results in better government.

[Commentary] Telecommunications companies are preparing to roll out the next generation of wireless networks, dubbed “5G,” which promise an enormous increase in capacity and connectivity. These networks not only will increase competition in broadband, they are a key enabling technology for a host of advanced products and services. They also represent a gateway to better economic opportunities in inner-city areas that are underserved by broadband today.

But these new networks are different in structure and appearance too. Instead of high-powered antennas on tall towers, they rely on an array of lower-power transmitters closer to the ground that serve much smaller “cells.” That’s why mobile phone companies are concerned that cities and counties will throw up bureaucratic or financial roadblocks to 5G in their communities. It’s not a groundless worry; wireless companies already have encountered local resistance in places where they have introduced the new technology. It’s the look and the intrusiveness of the small cell networks that seems to spark the controversy. People are upset about the deployment of thousands of pieces of equipment the size of small appliances being placed strategically and liberally on publicly owned “vertical infrastructure” (that’s bureaucratese for municipal utility poles, street lights and even traffic lights). That means a lot of equipment in full view and in proximity — really close in some cases — to houses and people. The wireless industry has a solution to this potentially huge NIMBY headache: A bill in the California legislature (SB 649) that would “streamline” the approval process for putting small cell networking gear on public poles and lights. If it’s on property the government controls, approval would be automatic in most cases, so local governments couldn’t drag out the permitting process with public hearings and studies. The bill also would limit how much rent locals can charge the companies for space on their poles and lights.

The telecommunication industry has been pushing this “streamlining” strategy in other states, with various degrees of success. Eleven have adopted some sort of laws to limit the local permitting process and pole fees. Legislators in other states, like Washington, have been more skeptical. California’s lawmakers ought to be wary as well and show more interest in protecting the rights of communities to govern the use of their infrastructure, rather than letting telecommunication companies make those decisions for them.

[Commentary] The newly constituted Federal Communications Commission is conservative and deregulatory, but in a way you would expect had any of the establishment Republicans won the White House last November. When Trump won, I worried that he would stack the FCC with nut-job loyalists so that he could follow through with his threats against the media. Luckily, that didn't happen.

[Commentary] With elections looming in 2018 that look to generate lots of political advertising, broadcasters should be well versed in defending the current state of political fundraising and spending, particularly the newly won right of corporations and other associations to spend unlimited amounts in support of their causes and candidates.

[Commentary] Do you think it’s okay for your internet service provider—the company, such as Comcast or Verizon, that connects you to the internet—to decide which websites you can visit or to determine which streaming services will look best on your smart TV? If the answer is no, you’re probably in favor of network neutrality. Consumers Union, the policy and mobilization arm of Consumer Reports, thinks that rolling back the rules could diminish competition, harming consumers.

[Commentary] The 2015 Open Internet Order received 3.7 million comments total, and the current rulemaking has received almost 5 million to date. Counting is easy. Knowing what that count means is not...

Despite the rhetoric, few in DC have much incentive to want the issue to go away. Millions of comments to the Federal Communications Commission also represent millions of fundraising opportunities. Groups arguing all sides of the issue financially benefit from the ongoing argument. Congress, meanwhile, probably will not weigh in before the 2018 election regardless of what the Federal Communications Commission does because that would mean giving up a campaign issue likely to be lucrative to members on both sides of the aisle. Thus, in the end, I suspect that millions of comments mostly mean that even after the current rulemaking is resolved, we will be stuck with this issue at least until sometime after the 2018 election and probably longer. Setting aside politics, it still remains the case that if the issue is to take into account broader public opinion then Congress is the only institution that can resolve it and, regardless of broad interest, only legislation has a chance of leading to a stable solution. Then, we can all finally move on to something else.

[Scott Wallsten is President and Senior Fellow at the Technology Policy Institute]