Benton Foundation

A couple weeks ago, an adorable seven-year-old boy named Toby complained that President Donald Trump is “deleting PBS kids” just to pay for the wall. Toby told US Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), “he shouldn’t do that.” The young boy received massive applause for standing up to his Senator, the President, and for what’s right. At this town hall, Senator Cotton said you could have both – a Mexican wall and PBS. But today it turns out that Toby was right. President Donald Trump unveiled his budget proposal, titled, “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again.” Disturbingly, the plan calls for the elimination of federal support for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It’s time to push back hard against any proposal that threatens public broadcasting and the vital services it delivers throughout the country. Let’s not take Big Bird away from kids like Toby.

[Commentary] Concerned with a “lack of full transparency,” all of the Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee wrote a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai on March 10 asking him six questions on his views on the media and whether he will uphold the First Amendment rights of journalists and media outlets..Senate Democrats have asked Chairman Pai for a reply by Friday, March 17. As the nation's lead communications regulator, it is imperative Chairman Pai affirm his commitment to free speech and freedom of the press and publicly post his answers to the senators this week. He should also address Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)'s request and release any information related to the March meeting with President Trump. The American people have a right to know what the FCC Chairman believes about freedom of the press – if he will stand up and speak out -- and we deserve to know now.

The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on oversight of the Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday, March 8. A good time was had by all. The committee’s senators highlighted a wide range of issues during the 2+ hour hearing. Here we focus on the First Amendment, broadband deployment, network neutrality, privacy, and the future makeup of the FCC. In an op-ed published in The Hill, former-FCC Commissioner Michael Copps urged new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to speak out in defense of the First Amendment and freedom of the press. As a FCC Commissioner, Pai said, “In my view, anyone who has the privilege of serving at the FCC—any preacher with a pulpit, if you will—has the duty to speak out whenever Americans’ First Amendment rights are at stake.” With President Donald Trump calling journalists “the enemy of the American people”, Copps and others are looking to the nation’s top communications regulator to declare the government has no place pressuring media organizations. In his opening remarks, Committee Ranking Member Bill Nelson (D-FL) said, “Ultimately, for this senator, the success or failure of the commission rests not on the fulfillment of special interest wish lists, but on how those who are least able to protect themselves have been treated and whether first amendment rights, including those of journalists, are vigorously protected.” During the hearing, Senators Tom Udall (D-NM) and Maggie Hassan (D-NH) pressed Chairman Pai to affirm his support of a free press, but Pai repeatedly refused to directly answer whether he agreed or disagreed with the President. Instead Pai said, “I don’t want to wade into the larger political debates, but I will simply reaffirm the quotes that you offered from last year and the year before.” Sen. Udall pressed Pai saying, “You refuse to answer that, about the media being the enemy of the American people.” Later Sen Hassan also returned to the issue saying, “I’d just like to give you another chance, because it seems to me that if you’re an outspoken defender of the free press, that should be a pretty easy question for you.” “No,” Pai answered. “I believe that every American enjoys the protections of the First Amendment offered by the Constitution.” Sen. Hassan said she wished she had gotten a different response.

[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?

Today’s action by the Wireline Competition Bureau is a welcome step in the right direction. We strongly urge the Commission to move forward with implementing the modernization of the Lifeline program so that our nation’s most vulnerable are connected to the opportunities made possible by broadband. Every day that the FCC delays in implementing Lifeline is another day veterans, rural students, people with disabilities, and other low-income people are left waiting in the digital desert.

[Commentary] Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently posted “Building Global Community” on his Facebook page, illustrating the company’s plans for developing the “social infrastructure to give people the power to build a global community that works for all of us.” Notably, Zuckerberg directly analyzes the state of the news industry and its important function in our society. Some people criticized Zuckerberg’s post, arguing it actually serves as a blueprint for destroying journalism. This week we take a closer look at Zuckerberg’s vision and what it could mean for the future of journalism.

The Federal Communications Commission voted to significantly expand an exemption from the transparency requirements on internet service providers that were enacted in the 2015 Open Internet Order. The expanded exemption will excuse any ISP with up to 250,000 subscribers from complying with those transparency rules.

Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood: “Here’s how cost-benefit analysis works in the Trump administration and at the Pai FCC: If any favored lobby like the cable industry claims that rules cost them money, the agency will zap those rules — without any regard for their benefits. There’s been a lot of ink spilled in the last two years about protecting small businesses from the alleged regulatory burdens of the Net Neutrality rules. But just as big cable and phone companies have failed to prove any harms from the rules in general, small ISPs have failed to demonstrate any real burdens from following these common-sense transparency requirements. The hopelessly vague, wildly disparate and frankly underwhelming numbers that various lobbying groups have sprinkled around in the docket to argue for this exemption are no justification for enlarging and extending it. Companies with hundreds of thousands of customers and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues can certainly afford to inform those customers about the services they buy. A few truly small businesses do sell internet access. But millions more small businesses buy it. There’s no reason that customers of smaller ISPs deserve less information than others do about the internet services they pay so much for each and every month.”

Ryan Clough, General Counsel at Public Knowledge: “Yet again, Chairman Pai has acted to weaken consumer protections at the FCC. Today’s action means that more ISPs could withhold essential information about their broadband pricing and service, making it harder for many more subscribers to make informed decisions and hold their providers accountable. How can it be good for consumers if companies conceal anything about the price, speed, and data caps for their broadband service?"

American Cable Association President and CEO Matthew M. Polka: "ACA applauds the FCC for reinstating, extending, and expanding the small Internet service provider (ISP) exemption from the Open internet enhanced transparency requirements. The FCC's action was clearly warranted. As ACA and others demonstrated - and as a bi-partisan group of Members of Congress found - application of these requirements to small ISPs would impose unreasonable costs on them while providing little, if any, benefit for end users and edge providers. ACA thanks Chairman Pai and Commissioner O'Rielly for acting so swiftly to remove the uncertainty small ISPs have lived under for the past two months. ACA also thanks Commissioner Clyburn, who understood the burdens the enhanced requirements imposed on small ISPs and who worked diligently since last fall to try to fashion a consensus solution."

NTCA - The Rural Broadband Association Chief Executive Officer Shirley Bloomfield: “NTCA worked hard alongside a group of like-minded stakeholders to ensure that small businesses would not be burdened by substantial new compliance obligations that could easily overwhelm their operations and distract from delivery of services to consumers. While it took longer to get here than everyone expected and hoped, we are grateful to the FCC for restoring much-needed relief from these rules. NTCA members are delighted to be able to focus more instead on the business of delivering high-quality broadband services to rural consumers.”

First the new Federal Communications Commission majority revoked the approval of nine companies to become Lifeline providers, a move that will weaken the Lifeline program and widen the digital divide. Now it appears that the E-Rate program, which makes broadband services more affordable for America’s schools and libraries, is in the FCC majority’s crosshairs. And much like in the case of Lifeline, the majority is using procedural steps and administrative tools to weaken the E-Rate program.

Chairman Pai is giving lip service to addressing the digital divide, but with no concrete vision of how to support and/or improve the programs the FCC already has in place to address it. Instead, we see, late on Friday evenings, Chairman Pai and Commissioner O’Reilly quietly gutting or hampering innovative pieces of the existing programs. Given this strategy, there is no avenue for a proactive discussion between stakeholders and the FCC -- public interest advocates are left only with a reactive position.

[Commentary] On February 2, new Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said, "I want this Commission to be as open and accessible as possible to the American people. I want us to do a better job of communicating with those we are here to serve" while announcing a new effort to make the agency more transparent. [We covered the news.] The next day, in what some call a “Friday News Dump,” Chairman Pai decided to rescind and hide facts previously released by the Commission. Cecilia Kang wrote in the New York Times, “In total, as the chairman of the FCC, Pai released about a dozen actions in the last week, many buried in the agency’s website and not publicly announced, stunning consumer advocacy groups and telecom analysts.”