Hill, The

[Commentary] As much as the Tom Wheeler Federal Communications Commission was known for its pro-consumer bias, the Ajit Pai FCC will become known for its pro-business bent. It is not that consumers will be forgotten; it is that Chairman Pai is an unabashed free-market trumpeter and proponent of limited federal government. As such, he is expected to encourage the private sector not only to pull its weight on competition, but also on consumer protection.

In opinion after opinion, Pai maintains that the key challenge for businesses — both large and small —is complying with an overweight regulatory regime. This philosophy, articulated often and eloquently by Pai, sits foursquare with the Trump doctrine and will guide Pai's actions, and most importantly, communications policy, for the foreseeable future.

[Adonis Hoffman is chairman of Business in the Public Interest and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. He served from 2013 to 2015 as chief of staff and senior legal advisor to a FCC commissioner.]

Intel Corp announced a $7 billion investment that the company projects will create 10,000 new jobs. The company will use the $7 billion to complete its Fab 42 factory in Chandler (AZ) Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said at a meeting at the White House with President Trump.

Krzanich said the decision to make the announcement with the White House was borne out of Intel’s support for Trump’s economic and trade policies. “We support the Administration’s policies to level the global playing field and make U.S. manufacturing competitive worldwide through new regulatory standards and investment policies,” Krzanich wrote in an e-mail to Intel employees. “When we disagree, we don’t walk away,” he continued. “We believe that we must be part of the conversation to voice our views on key issues such as immigration, H1B visas and other policies that are essential to innovation.” President Trump tweeted about the meeting, calling it a “great investment” in “American INNOVATION and JOBS!”

The Trump administration is more trusted than the news media among voters, according to a new Emerson College poll. The administration is considered truthful by 49 percent of registered voters and untruthful by 48 percent. But the news media is less trusted than the administration, with 53 percent calling it untruthful and just 39 percent finding it honest. The numbers split along party lines, with nearly 9 in 10 Republicans saying the Trump administration is truthful, compared with more than 3 in 4 Democrats who say the opposite. The Emerson poll found that 69 percent of Democrats think the news media is truthful while 91 percent of Republicans consider the Fourth Estate untruthful. The poll was conducted Feb 5-6 with a sample of 617 registered voters and a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points.

Democratic lawmakers vowed to stand firm against any efforts by Republicans to roll back the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) network neutrality rules. “The big broadband barons and their Republican allies want to turn back the clock and make big cable and big cellphone companies the gatekeepers for internet access,” said Sen Ed Markey (D-MA). “They have a new FCC chairman in Ajit Pai who will do their bidding.” Supporters of the internet rules, which require broadband providers to treat all traffic the same, are worried net neutrality could be on the chopping block under a GOP-controlled Congress and FCC. "You’ve got Senate Democrats who understand how important this issue is,” said Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR). “If it comes down to the citizens and the people at the grassroots against the special interests, we’ve shown we can win that. I’m looking forward to that fight again,” he added, noting the millions of comments filed in support of net neutrality in 2014.

The Trump administration will continue to use the term "fake news" to push back on what Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to President Trump, described as media outlets' "monumental desire" to "attack a duly elected president." "There is a monumental desire on behalf of the majority of the media — not just the pollsters — the majority of the media to attack a duly elected president in the second week of his term," Gorka said. "That's how unhealthy the situation is, and until the media understands how wrong that attitude is, and how it hurts their credibility, we are going to continue to say 'fake news.' " The president and senior members of the administration have dubbed national outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN as "fake news" in critiques both before and after the Jan. 20 inauguration.

Rep Mo Brooks (R-AL) took to the House floor Feb 7 to dismiss a Washington Post fact check about his claims of voter fraud as a “fake news hit piece.” Leaked tapes from the GOP retreat in Philadelphia in Jan that were given to the Post revealed Rep Brooks discussing voter fraud with Vice President Mike Pence. “In my first election in 1982, Democrats rigged about 25 percent of the voting machines to vote for everyone on the ballot but me. That’s 11 of 45 machines. The whole state was Democrat. Nothing was done to fix it,” Rep Brooks said during the private discussion. The Post conducted a fact check of Rep Brooks’s claims, but could not find any evidence to substantiate the charges.

The Post awarded Brooks its maximum of four Pinocchios, reserved for what it considers “whoppers.” Rep Brooks didn’t offer any additional evidence during his House floor speech. But he maintained the 11 machines failing to register votes for him statistically suggested some intentional foul play. “I proudly wear the Washington Post’s Four Pinocchios like a red badge of courage,” Rep Brooks declared.

[Commentary] The most modern part of America’s economy – communications – suffers under America’s most out-of-date law and most backward-looking regulation. In the absence of Congress passing a modern communications law for the 21st century, it can be hard to see what a modern Federal Communications Commission would or should look like.

As the new FCC, led by Republican Chairman Ajit Pai, organizes and focuses on how to legitimately mitigate and reverse the previous FCC’s most retrograde technology-driven regulations, it is much easier to know what is not a modern FCC.

[Scott Cleland is president of Precursor LLC and chairman of NetCompetition]

Rep Jim Jordan (R-OH) argued that the media is trying to undermine President Donald Trump and his recent executive orders. “Does the media have a bias? And is the media out to make sure that they can undermine some of the things that the president is doing? I think that’s pretty clear,” Rep Jordan told CNN’s “New Day.”

CNN host Chris Cuomo pressed Rep Jordan over President Trump’s recent claim that the media does not cover terrorist attacks, a statement Cuomo said “is demonstrably false.” “I’ll take your word for it that you didn’t underreport that. You actually reported some of those,” Rep Jordan said. “All. All is the word you’re looking for,” Cuomo replied.

[Commentary] As one of his first actions in office, President Trump selected Ajit Pai to be the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. It was a phenomenal choice. Chairman Pai is a “lawyer’s lawyer” with significant experience in the field and, as such, is one of the most qualified persons ever to hold the post in recent memory. It is wonderful to see that hard work, expertise, and merit still matter in American politics.

The incoming chairman certainly has a lot on his plate. I would submit that among Chairman Pai’s most pressing concerns must be to repair the commission’s tattered reputation as an expert agency worthy of public trust. Pai’s predecessor, Democrat Tom Wheeler, had no regard for due process and no reluctance to lie to the American people to achieve political outcomes. As a result, there are growing calls to curtail—if not outright abolish—the FCC and to transfer those responsibilities to the Federal Trade Commission and other federal agencies. While changing market conditions warrant serious contemplation about the nature and scope of FCC oversight, it is also important that we not throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water simply because the Obama administration cavalierly abused the public trust.

[Lawrence Spiwak is the President of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies]

Fake news did not change the result 2016 presidential election, according to a study by researchers at Stanford and New York University. The study shows that fake news stories favorable to Republican nominee Donald Trump far outnumbered similar stories about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. But only 8 percent of voters actually read those stories, and even fewer recall or believed what they were reading, researchers said. Favorable but fake Trump news was shared 30 million times on Facebook during the campaign, while fake pro-Clinton news was shared about 7 million times.

"Our data suggest that social media were not the most important source of election news and even the most widely circulated news stories were seen by only a small fraction of Americans,” lead researchers Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow wrote. In order for fake news to have a real effect on the election, it would have had to have been as persuasive as 36 television ads, the study concludes. Fake news became so prominent in 2016, Politifact named it "the lie of the year," a dubious award usually reserved for humans. "Because of its powerful symbolism in an election year filled with rampant and outrageous lying — PolitiFact is naming Fake News the 2016 'winner.'”