Huffington Post

On Nov 9, either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump should be the next president of the United States. But whether reporters are able to follow her or him throughout the day, as is done for the sitting president, remains unclear. Neither campaign has yet agreed to a protective pool to track the president-elect’s movements, a departure from recent election cycles.

“It is not normal and it is unacceptable,” said Jeff Mason, a Reuters correspondent and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association. The White House Correspondents’ Association oversees the rotating group of reporters who travel everywhere with the president and file dispatches to the larger press corps on what he’s doing, whom he’s meeting with and when he returns home. This arrangement, known as a protective pool, is considered necessary to ensure journalists are present in the event of any newsworthy comment or moment, including a threat on the president’s life. Both the Clinton and Trump campaigns have traveling press pools, but neither is fully protective. The Democratic and Republican standard-bearers in recent election cycles ― including Sen John McCain (R-AZ) and former Massachusetts Gov Mitt Romney ― had protective pools in place by the time they wrapped up the summer conventions. In letters sent to the Clinton and Trump campaigns, the WHCA’s leadership expressed “profound concern and consternation” at both for so far failing to establish a protective pool system and urged each “to remedy the situation without delay for the remainder of the 2016 campaign.”

[Commentary] Americans have made it clear that they want more control over their personal information. It’s time for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to act quickly and finally put in place strong rules for Internet service providers, or ISPs, to protect consumers’ privacy. Unfortunately, when the FCC announced more than a year and half ago its intention to adopt new privacy rules for ISPs, the rebuke from critics was swift. The proposal was an important step forward, but the critics argued that because consumers could be confused, the government should not adopt new rules for ISPs unless those rules were imposed on everyone at the same time. In other words, because websites would not operate under the stronger rules, ISPs should not have to either. The optimal solution would be to adopt strong privacy rules for both ISPs and websites, but unfortunately, this is easier said than done.

Today, the FCC can adopt rules of the road to protect people’s privacy only when it comes to ISPs. Websites, on the other hand, are overseen by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Unlike the FCC, the FTC must follow an arduous process that makes it virtually impossible to adopt similar rules. Moreover, a recent court decision has thrown the legal landscape into chaos by potentially undermining the FTC’s already limited ability to protect consumers without the FCC’s help. We need to make sure consumers’ privacy is protected, no matter where they go on the Internet or how they connect. Congress should take this opportunity to fully empower the FTC, and give it the tools it needs to protect consumers from the unscrupulous practices of any company that can collect and monetize their data — whether it is a website or a cable company. To fully answer the public’s call and maximize the economic power of the Internet, the two agencies must do all they can to protect consumers by using the tools that they have today. That means the FCC must act now to finalize strong, new privacy rules.

[Rep Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) is the Ranking Member of the House Commerce Committee]

Kellyanne Conway, the campaign manager for Donald Trump, claimed that some embedded network producers following the GOP presidential nominee are overwhelmingly “negative” in their coverage. “Start looking at the Twitter feeds of ‘objective’ reporters, particularly our embeds,” Conway said. “These are not profiles in courage and this is not journalism. There are people who cover our campaign who actually just slander our candidate on Twitter.” Conway said she found 92 percent of the tweets posted by at least two embeds to be negative. “Why are they on our campaign plane?” she asked. “Why are they covering our campaign?”

Throughout the nearly 14-minute interview, Conway suggested the Trump campaign was the victim of media bias and said her biggest worry regarding the debate with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was “not being treated fairly afterward” by the press. “I’m worried some of the headlines are already written,” she added.

[Commentary] Sixty years ago, we were all asked to take part in the world’s biggest sociological experiment: What would happen if every single person in the nation were to spend five hours a day, every day, for their entire lives, staring at a glowing box in their living room? Now, 60 years later, the results are in. And the results are: President Trump.

There are those who believe that the Roman Empire collapsed because of lead in the drinking water. The Romans were great builders of water systems, from aqueducts to heated baths to water piped into their homes. They made their pipes of lead, and, very much without realizing it, may have poisoned themselves and enfeebled their minds — slowly, over time. We were great builders of media systems. We used twisted copper and then fiber to pipe content into our homes, the way the Romans did water. And, it may be that, just as the Romans poisoned their minds with their lead-tainted drinking water, we may have all collectively poisoned or own minds with our intellectually tainted content — endless hour after hour, day after day, week after week, year after year of mindless entertainment.

[Michael Rosenblum is the founder of Current TV]

[Commentary] Somebody inside the Associated Press should hide the shovels so editors there will stop digging. The hole they’ve dug in recent days just keeps getting bigger as the wire service refuses to admit obvious mistakes in the lengthy investigation they published last week about Clinton Foundation donors, and the implication they were able to buy access at Hillary Clinton’s State Department. Not only was the AP article itself deeply flawed and lacking crucial context, the news organization also tweeted out this categorically false announcement to its 8.4 million followers to promote its investigation: “BREAKING: AP analysis: More than half those who met Clinton as Cabinet secretary gave money to Clinton Foundation.”

As the AP investigation began to crumble, I noted that the wire service joined a dubious list of news outlets that have gotten burned chasing bogus Clinton “scandal” stories over the years. And now we’re seeing the postscript to that sad tradition: News outlets which then refuse to admit they botched their Clinton “scandal” stories. There’s a stubborn refusal to clean up their own mess.

[Eirc Boehlert is a senior fellow with Media Matters for America]

[Commentary] The DC Circuit Court’s decision to uphold the Federal Communications Commission’s 2015 reclassification of broadband as a telecommunications service was a big deal. Going forward, there’s now a meaningful protection against the abuse of Internet monopoly power (complexities related to plans like “zero-rating“ notwithstanding). But we should be clear about what this decision does not do. While it establishes a crucial safeguard and changes the larger conversation about the role of digital communications in a democratic society, it doesn’t strike at the core problem: corporate capture of the Internet. The decision doesn’t weaken the stranglehold that a handful of Internet firms hold over broadband and it doesn’t significantly lessen the digital divide.

In many ways, it was a defensive victory that undid past damage. The history of American media policy suggests there are three general ways to prevent commercial capture of a communication system:
1) Breaking up or preventing media monopolies and oligopolies (e.g., the FCC forcing NBC to divest itself of a major network in the 1940s, the establishment of media ownership restrictions, and antitrust action against AT&T in the 1980s).
2) Creating alternative public infrastructures (such as public broadcasting or community/municipal-owned broadband).
3) Mandating strong public interest protections (via the Equal Time Rule or restrictions on advertising).

Challenging corporate dominance of crucial infrastructure like the Internet will take long-term organizing and tremendous grassroots energy. What we know thus far about Hillary Clinton’s tech policy agenda suggests there’s room for improvement, especially in contesting corporate capture of the Internet. Confronting the structural roots of internet monopoly power will require the same commitment to democratic principles and the same activism that won net neutrality.

[Victor Pickard is an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication]

News organizations have been preparing for the possibility of their employees covering political unrest during the Republican National Convention, with some offering training and equipment typically reserved for war correspondents. Yet even a body armor-clad reporter or photographer could miss the action if arrested.

The National Press Photographers Association recently conducted a series of trainings with Cleveland (OH) police to help minimize the chances that journalists will spend a few hours, or a night, in jail. Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel for the NPPA, described preventing the arrest of journalists as a “triple win.” “Officers and departments wouldn’t get sued for violating people’s constitutional rights,” he said. “Citizens and journalists would be able to exercise those rights. And ultimately the public would be informed as to what’s going on.” Osterreicher held those hour-and-a-half training sessions with police in June in Cleveland ― and more recently in Philadelphia (PA), site of next week’s Democratic National Convention. The NPPA received a grant from the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation of the Society of Professional Journalists for the trainings. “We greatly appreciate those departments’ willingness to help avoid unnecessary and improper interference, harassment and arrests of those doing nothing more than exercising a constitutional right,” the Society of Professional Journalists said.

[Commentary] Look at the power of today's social media in the hands both of journalists committed to truth-telling and everyday citizens fighting back against injustice.

The tragedy and ensuing crisis in Ferguson (MO) have shown the ability of social media to get the story told.

Yes, we're talking about preserving network neutrality, preventing the Federal Communications Commission from allowing the Internet to be split into fast lanes for the rich and slow lanes for the rest of us, lanes that could be clogged or blocked to prevent word from getting out about corporate and government malfeasance.

Think of the loss to democracy if that ability to access a free and open Internet is taken away.

[Winship is a senior writer for Moyers & Company]

On the night of Aug 13, 2014, about half a million people watched online as a militarized police force in in Ferguson, Missouri, squared off with largely peaceful crowds protesting the killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown.

Mustafa Hussein, a constitutional law student who volunteers at the small, urban music station based in nearby Maplewood, said that Argus Radio, which launched online in 2013 and is run by five volunteers, recently purchased video equipment so it could livestream concerts. But the station decided to use the equipment for the first time to cover the interaction between police and protesters.

As many as half a million people simultaneously watched the livestream, and about 1.2 million people in total watched it, Hussein said.

[Commentary] Channel surfers who stopped on MSNBC on July 11 in the 6 p.m. hour would have stumbled on something new in the world of cable news. In the July segment, every person on camera -- the host and the two guests -- was African-American.

That such a phenomenon is new, of course, is itself a broad indictment. But on MSNBC and occasionally CNN, black hosts and black guests have been discussing news that is targeted not just at the black community, but at all viewers.