Free Press

While unveiling his plan to dismantle network neutrality and defang the Federal Communications Commission, Chairman Ajit Pai spent a good chunk of April 26’s speech defaming Free Press. Instead of making the case for his new policies, Chairman Pai recycled some out-of-context quotes to red-bait one of our co-founders and dismiss our decade-plus efforts to safeguard the open internet.

We’ve made no secret of our disdain for Chairman Pai’s policies and his fondness for falsehoods. And we’ve long sparred with him in the press and corrected his lies. But we’ve gotten some questions about what Chairman Pai said. So I thought I’d clear up the record.

Note: This is an updated version of an older post. Due to the Trump Administration's recent attacks on network neutrality, we felt it was important to resurface these important examples of what happens when cable and phone companies are left to their own devices. For years a lineup of phone- and cable-industry spokespeople has called Net Neutrality “a solution in search of a problem.” The principle that protects free speech and innovation online is irrelevant, they claim, as blocking has never, ever happened. And if it did, they add, market forces would compel internet service providers to correct course and reopen their networks.

In reality, many providers both in the United States and abroad have violated the principles of net neutrality — and they plan to continue doing so in the future. This history of abuse revealed a problem that the FCC’s 2015 Net Neutrality protections solved. Those rules are now under threat from Trump’s FCC Chairman, Ajit Pai, who is determined to hand over control of the internet to massive internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon.

[Commentary] President Donald Trump’s playbook to curb free speech and silence dissenting voices goes far beyond his Twitter rants and his verbal attacks on the press. The president’s appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, unveiled his plan to kill network neutrality at a closed-door FreedomWorks-sponsored event.

It’s appropriate that Chairman Pai made this announcement at a gathering sponsored by a telecom-funded organization that played a key role in elevating the racist Tea Party movement. His plan will allow powerful corporations to silence the voices of everyday people — especially people of color — who struggle to be heard. But these are surroundings Chairman Pai is comfortable in. He’s a former Verizon lawyer and a former Senate staffer for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a hero to White nationalists. And now Pai will carry out Trump’s agenda to silence dissenting voices.

Free Press President and CEO Craig Aaron joined a press conference with Sens Ed Markey (D–MA), Richard Blumenthal (D–CT) and Ron Wyden (D–OR), as well as Evan Greer of Fight for the Future, to talk about the Trump Federal Communications Commission’s threats to network neutrality.

In his remarks, Aaron said, "In Ajit Pai’s fantasy world, all will be fine if the companies double-pinky-swear not to interfere with online pathways and portals — despite their long history of doing just that. His justification for launching this attack on internet users is the utterly false and repeatedly debunked claim that the FCC rules are dampening investment to build out and improve networks. Do not believe Pai’s alternative facts. The reality is that in the two years since the FCC's 2015 vote, we’ve actually seen an explosion in over-the-top video competition as well as a dramatic increase in next-generation broadband network deployment. Aggregate investments by publicly traded ISPs are up by more than 5 percent since the order came down....The public won’t be fooled by Chairman Pai’s laughable plan or the empty promises of telecom executives. The free and open internet is just too important to our ability to communicate, to organize and to innovate — and we will fight with everything we’ve got against those trying to take it away."

On April 20, the Federal Communications Commission voted to reinstate an obsolete loophole called the UHF discount that will allow broadcast conglomerates to exceed congressionally mandated national TV audience coverage limits. April 21, Sinclair Broadcast Group, the nation’s largest television station conglomerate, announced a $240 million deal to buy 14 television stations owned by Bonten Media Group.

Sinclair is also reported to be in negotiations to buy stations owned by Tribune Media Co., a move that would put Sinclair 30 percentage points over the national broadcast ownership cap, if not for the FCC’s move reinstating the UHF discount. The vote came following press reports by Bloomberg News that Chairman Pai had conducted meetings with Sinclair executives days after the Nov. 8 presidential election. Chairman Pai was subsequently tapped by the Trump administration to lead the agency that oversees broadcast ownership limits. Free Press CEO and President Craig Aaron said, “This is a scandal. Sinclair has been boosting Trump and wooing Pai for months — and it’s paying off in the form of the looser limits Sinclair has long sought on how many TV stations the company can own. Sinclair has a track record of taking over stations, gutting news departments and airing conservative propaganda produced far from the local community."

On April 20, several activists “RickRolled” the Federal Communications Commission’s open meeting to protest FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s plans to undermine network neutrality. Singing and dancing along to a recording of the 1987 Rick Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up," the activists disrupted the agency’s monthly meeting and were escorted from FCC headquarters. “We’re never gonna give up fighting for our online rights,” said Free Press Field Director Mary Alice Crim. “Today’s protest was a reminder to Chairman Pai and his boss Donald Trump that people everywhere love the internet. We will do anything and everything to oppose his efforts to destroy the open internet. More than 4 million took a stand for Net Neutrality in 2015, and we aren’t going to take this sitting down today.”

We’re launching News Voices: North Carolina to forge connections between North Carolinians and the newsrooms that serve them. We’re beginning our community-engagement initiatives in Charlotte and the Triangle, and we anticipate working in places like Asheville, the Triad and Wilmington over the next two years. We’ll host small gatherings, trainings and public conversations. We’ll foster collaborations between newsrooms and community groups. We’ll strengthen networks of journalists, media makers and people who care about quality local news and information, building stronger bonds statewide to foster better and more sustainable news coverage of North Carolina.

It’s hard to defend legislation that undermines internet users’ essential privacy rights. But that hasn’t stopped the broadband industry and its many friends in Washington from trying.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and Federal Trade Commission Acting Chair Maureen Ohlhausen dismiss the public outpouring of anger as the work of a few professional lobbyists and lawyers. Their claim is insulting to the millions of people who are rightly outraged. And these two should know better than to blame “lobbyists,” especially since both are DC lawyers who once represented the interests of mammoth communications companies.

[Commentary] In essence, the GOP leaders and members voting the wrong way this week have accomplished an exquisitely dishonest trifecta. They gutted the Federal Communications Commission’s privacy rules based on a Title II statute while claiming that the Title II statute still protects you. Then they promised to gut the same Title II statute while claiming that the Federal Trade Commission still protects you. And it turns out they want to gut the FTC too — the very same agency they’re holding up as a champion of privacy protections. Last but not least, these lawmakers say the FTC’s approach to online privacy is superior because the agency analyzes each potential violation on a case-by-case basis while the FCC’s privacy protections are rooted in broad bright-line rules.

With the aid of their industry donors, the GOP has tried to frame this fight as a debate about complex legal authority and bureaucratic procedures. The reality is much simpler. They’re opposed to any regulations that put the interests of real people before the profit margins of monopoly Internet service providers, and they will take up whatever nonsensical procedural complaints are handy to chip away at strong consumer protections.

On March 23, a coalition of digital rights advocates, racial justice groups and grassroots activists called on Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to make a more genuine effort to provide affordable internet access for low-income communities. In comments filed as part of an agency proceeding on its Lifeline program, members of Voices for Internet Freedom called on the FCC to reverse a February order revoking the Lifeline status of nine internet-access providers, and to fully implement the Lifeline Modernization Order passed in 2016. The Voices filing notes that the FCC’s revocation “erodes Lifeline's promise to bring affordable broadband to low-income consumers.”

Voices is urging the Commission to avoid any future effort to undermine Lifeline reforms put in place by former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, former Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. Free Press has received more than 13,000 comments from people across the country protesting Pai’s attacks on Lifeline and supporting the expansion of the program to broadband. Another 18,000 public comments were filed by Demand Progress, a digital rights group urging the FCC to support Lifeline and close the digital divide for those who need access most.