Huffington Post

Andy Puzder didn’t work out as President Donald Trump’s labor secretary, but the fast-food executive would fit in well on the president’s communications team. Puzder argued that his nomination was sunk in large part by biased journalists, who he said carried out a “fake news tsunami” against him.

He applauded Trump in his ongoing feud with the press. “When you’ve got The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Huffington Post and all the major news networks on [the left’s] side, it’s very, very difficult to get your message out there,” Puzder said. “I think that’s one of the reasons President Trump is so aggressively taking on the media and pointing out what they’re doing, and I think he should.” “I think it’s horrific the way they’re treating this president,” he added.

[Commentary] The 2016 election has been described as a “change election.” It’s an apt description, but not for the reasons ascribed by political commentators. “Make America Great Again” became a surrogate for “Make me secure again amidst all this change.” Great swaths of the electorate sought stability in a world where everything seemed to be changing. Leading the way to that destabilization has been technological innovation. The digital world has gnawed away at the underpinnings of social and economic stability. From attacking traditional jobs, to ever-increasing prices for once-free television, to teenagers withdrawing into online worlds, technology has driven change that upset the security of tradition.

The story of how Americans responded when faced with previous transformational change is the true measure of American greatness. It is the story of fighting back when change is harmful, yet not allowing the frustration with change to turn into a rejection of its benefits. Most importantly, it is the story of new ideas attacking new problems. Like today, the technology revolution of the 19th century produced a longing for stability. But instead of retreating, Americans pushed forward to build a new security around new concepts. Universal education, employee rights, governmental offsets to abusive market power and other initiatives targeted the new problems. The result was the good old days many now long for. Confronting the challenge of a new technological era is an American tradition. Whether we are as successful at handling our revolution as those who preceded us will be the test of our generation. Dealing with change is not a retreat to what America was but the full-throated embrace of the opportunities created for new ideas directed at the new realities.

[Commentary] It’s been just over a month since Donald Trump’s victory, and as the media is still in the midst of its post-election autopsy, a super villain has emerged: fake news. Fake news has been with us, in different guises, since long before anyone ever had the chance to tweet it. And our understanding of the current fake news problem, and our ability to combat it in the future, depends on our willingness to expand our study and skepticism of news that, for various reasons, has the power to misinform – and have serious consequences.

It’s been said many times in the wake of Trump’s election that there’s never been a more important time for thorough, uncompromising reporting, and this is true. But it will take more than simply blaming social media for its powers of distribution, or sniping about those on the other side of the ideological divide who get their news from sources different from our own.

[Arianna Huffington is the founder of the Huffington Post. Ari Emanuel is the CEO of William Morris Endeavor Entertainment]

[Commentary] Who do we rely on to get our news? Unfortunately, most people are getting their news via social media. It’s important that people regain their trust in the mainstream media due to flaws in social media, such as recent fake news stories posted on Facebook and Twitter. However, most of the blame on the public’s information deficit is being placed on the media and social media platforms. That blame is partially misplaced. We, as news consumers, need to take the initiative to be more skeptical and questioning about the information that we receive.

It’s also essential that people become savvy media consumers in order to wade through the vast ocean of information that is available. The mainstream media and journalism took a reputation hit during this past election. However, journalists continue to serve an important role in society as watchdogs on the government and politicians to keep them honest and to expose corruption. It’s a profession that we can’t live without in a free society.

[Larry Atkins teaches Journalism at Temple University and Arcadia University.]

[Commentary] Vice President-elect Mike Pence is supposedly cleaning house of lobbyists who are part of the Trump transition team. We would suggest that Jeffrey Eisenach fits the bill.

We already wrote about some of his ties to Verizon and the other phone and cable companies, including Comcast. In a 2014 email, Eisenach encouraged Federal Communications Commission member Michael O’Rielly to use an American Enterprise Institute event to ‘lay out the case against’ network neutrality regulations. Eisenach reinforced this message by writing commentary pieces, using his title as a think tank scholar. AEI is a 501(c) (3) educational organization and it claims it does not take positions on public policy issues. Comparing this quote and the email, one has to realize AEI is not supposed to be lobbying for Verizon and the other phone, wireless and cable companies. It could even be violating their IRS granted non-profit status. Now, it could be that this just shows the coziness of the FCC transition team leader with the FCC staff, but considering that Eisenach’s client, Verizon, benefits from these dealings, this brings up a host of ethical violations, or other acts that need investigation.

[Bruce Kushnick is Executive Director of the New Networks Institute]

[Commentary] President-elect Donald Trump claims that he is going to ‘drain the swamp’ of ‘special interests’. It has not started out well. A recent New York Times article claims, “President-elect Donald J. Trump, who campaigned against the corrupt power of special interests, is filling his transition team with some of the very sort of people who he has complained have too much clout in Washington: corporate consultants and lobbyists.” And the New York Times article features a picture of Dr. Jeffrey Eisenach, front and center.

Eisenach is formerly the founder of a coin-operated group called Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF), and is now a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute as well as working for the telco-friendly, NERA Economic Consulting as Managing Director Co-Chair, Communications, Media, and Internet Practice. But, as the Times wrote, he also works for Verizon, yet is the head of the transition team to fill the Federal Communications Commission with new staff. “Jeffrey Eisenach, a consultant who has worked for years on behalf of Verizon and other telecommunications clients, is the head of the team that is helping to pick staff members at the Federal Communications Commission.” If Trump is serious about ‘draining the swamp’, then he should worry he is instead creating a new toxic garbage dump, filling it with the same bad actors he claims he wants to clean out.

[Bruce Kushnick is the Executive Director of the New Networks Institute]

President-elect Donald Trump loves to bash the media, but subscriptions to national publications have risen significantly since his election.

[Commentary] In the coming weeks and months, we will hear from AT&T representatives that the merger with Time Warner will provide many public benefits. But the lessons from recent history should give us pause as to the veracity of these claims. Challenging this merger may provide a crucial test case for whether the era of digital media monopolies has begun to recede. But successfully turning the tide will require tremendous grassroots energy and organizing, including educational efforts that connect the dots between people’s daily grievances with their communication services and the excesses of corporate media power.

Poor service and outrageously high bills are the costs of living under lightly regulated media oligopolies—which is the broader context for why such a merger deserves close regulatory scrutiny from the Justice Department and from the Federal Communications Commission regarding, respectively, antitrust and public interest concerns. One corporation controlling so much production and distribution of news and entertainment media could raise prices and reduce media options for millions of consumers, and it could harm the information system that supports our democracy. America’s communication networks are already plagued by unnecessary costs and poor services, and this merger would likely make things worse.

[Victor Pickard is an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication]

[Commentary] So now we have had two years of ‘balanced’ coverage of Donald Trump. He may very well move into the White House because of that ‘balance’. No one has been ‘alienated’, no viewers lost. Ratings have never been better. If Trump gets elected, the journalists and media companies will have no one to blame but themselves. Where is a High Court when you need one?

[Michael Rosenblum is the Founder of Current TV, Past President NY Times TV]

[Commentary] Back in 2013, the NY Times broke a story that AT&T routinely sold “de-identified” phone data to the CIA. Because the CIA is not allowed to do domestic spying, AT&T would sell supposedly anonymous data to the CIA, which would then give the information to the FBI. The FBI would then use its domestic spy powers to get the information from AT&T. In addition to being a rather outrageous work around of laws designed to protect Americans from domestic spying, I argued that AT&T’s program violated federal telemarketing and phone privacy rules, aka Section 222 of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 222) also known as the “customer proprietary network information” (CPNI) rules. So my employer Public Knowledge, with a number of other public interest and privacy advocates, filed a Request for Declaratory Ruling with the Federal Communications Commission asking the FCC to declare that AT&T selling “de-identified” phone information without customer consent violated the CPNI Rules.

Recently, the Daily Beast reported that AT&T continues to engage in precisely this practice nearly 3 years after we asked the FCC to declare it violated their privacy rules. In fact, the sale to the CIA turned out to be the just part of a larger AT&T “product” called “Project Hemisphere.” According to the Daily Beast and others, law enforcement agencies pay millions of dollars annually to circumvent warrant requirements and gain access to all sorts of call information the law purportedly protects. Which raises the interesting question — why didn’t the FCC do anything on our 3 year old complaint? Recently, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler circulated a draft Order to the full Commission for a vote scheduled for Oct 27. According to the fact sheet published by the Chairman’s office, the proposed rules will allow for “de-identification,” subject to certain protections. Of particular relevance here, carriers that certify data is anonymized must not re-identify the data, and must have contractual limits that prevent third parties from re-identifying the data.

[Harold Feld is senior vice president for Public Knowledge]