Huffington Post

[Commentary] The proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger has the potential of carrying considerable implications for New York City consumers.

Prior to rendering a decision, the Public Service Commission must thoughtfully deliberate the effects that the proposed merger would have on our community to ensure that the needs of our people are best served by any changes that would -- or could -- result. This deal would merge Comcast Corporation, which is not only the biggest cable company in the US; it is also the largest media provider in the world, with Time Warner Cable, the second largest cable company in the country.

This merger is extremely concerning to any reasonable person with respect to the effects of non-competition on Internet and cable customers, as it will likely diminish what is already minimal competition for high-speed Internet.

In addition, apart from cable and Internet customers, Time Warner Cable and Comcast already have the vast majority of power to set prices on transit and content providers -- some of whom are direct competitors of content providers owned by Comcast, which certainly sounds ripe for an abuse power by Comcast towards non-Comcast owned content providers.

Furthermore, if the merger were to succeed, the interconnection market -- where Comcast already has tremendous control -- would be undoubtedly altered, possibly facilitating Comcast to gain additional leverage in demanding higher payments from transit companies.

[James is New York City's elected Public Advocate and Chair of the Commission on Public Information and Communication (COPIC)]

[Commentary] Over the past 15 years, as newspaper circulation has declined, more and more people are turning to advocacy journalism via websites, talk radio, cable TV, and blogs to get their news. The problem is that many of these blogs and websites are biased, have an agenda, don't do much fact checking, aren't edited, and aren't held accountable when they get facts wrong.

TV networks like MSNBC and FOX News and talk radio talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have a clearly biased agenda. Yet, many people rely on advocacy journalism as their main source of news.

As reported by Andrew Beaujon of Poynter.org on June 10, a newly released survey by the Public Religion Research Institute and Brookings Institute on religion, values, and immigration reform revealed that "people's media choices have a strong effect on their beliefs." The study stated that, "Only 42% of Republicans who most trust Fox News to provide accurate information about politics and current events support a path to citizenship, compared to 60% of Republicans who most trust other news sources."

Advocacy journalists do not set out to inform; they set out to advance an agenda, whether it be conservative or liberal. While FOX News and conservative talk radio show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are the worst offenders, liberal television hosts like Al Sharpton and Rachel Maddow also fall into this category. They are all giving their opinion and reporting news with a goal and a biased agenda. Perhaps most importantly, advocacy journalism is polarizing our country.

[Atkins is Journalist, Lawyer, Professor]

Journalist Glenn Greenwald defended the value of digital privacy and slammed those who dismiss its importance during a stop on his national book tour.

“We all need places where we can go to explore without the judgmental eyes of other people being cast upon us," he said. "Only in a realm where we’re not being watched can we really test the limits of who we want to be. It’s really in the private realm where dissent, creativity and personal exploration lie.” He said that people who downplay the importance of privacy typically say, "I have nothing to hide." But, he added, those people aren't willing to publish their social media and email passwords.

[Commentary] While most of us are aware of community access television -- those cable channels that are reserved for local government and public access programming -- few people recognize what an important resource this is for communities throughout the nation.

More than 3,000 Public, Educational and Governmental (PEG) cable channels are operating around the country, offering information about everything from local city council hearings to community events, and featuring community-generated programs from cooking shows to local musical talent. Particularly in underserved urban, suburban and rural communities, the PEG channels offer a vital community connection.

But these community channels are facing serious threats -- not simply from the funding crisis faced by all municipalities, but also because of a loophole in a 40-year-old federal law that could easily be closed. Fortunately, there is a growing movement afoot to save community access by closing this loophole.

"Many organizations including the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Administrators (NATOA), the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) and FreePress to name a few, have devoted time and effort to advocate for the continued support of community media," said Keri Stokstad, Alliance for Community Media Board Chair and Executive Director of Pasadena Media in Pasadena, California. "It is imperative that we honor the intention of the Cable Act to ensure resources are allocated to support local content creation."

[Commentary] In the days before guns and horses, Native Americans used a "buffalo jump" to harvest Bison in mass quantities. They would stampede the animals over cliffs and spear them to death when they fell upon the rocks below. Figuratively speaking, AM radio faces a similar fate.

Like the Bison, a certain number of AM stations are driven over the cliff each year but unlike the Native Americans, the Federal Communications Commission doesn't care enough to sustain the remaining herd.

We must come to grips with reality. The FCC has waited too long to act on the problems facing the AM band, and the agency has made so many wrong and irreversible decisions that the AM band can't be sustained in the long term.

Those of us who face this dismal future must insist in the strongest possible way that the FCC use its regulatory authority to save the diversity of programming produced and broadcast by AM stations, for it's too late to save the AM radio band.

As licensee of KCAA Radio, a standalone AM station, I can clearly see the buffalo jump ahead and I refuse to be stampeded over it. I will not sit quietly and meekly and accept the slow and certain demise of AM radio while the FCC does nothing with dozens of FM frequencies below 87.5 FM that should provide AM stations with a new home.

It's time for the Congress and the FCC to pause it's love affair with inefficient point to point communication and realize that the most efficient form of mass communication and spectrum utilization continues to be point to multipoint terrestrial radio, and unless the AM band is migrated to FM very soon, the opportunity to expand the band will be gone forever. In my opinion, this will require Congressional action. There is only one logical way to "cure" the problems of AM radio and that's to migrate all AM stations to FM frequencies below 87.5 FM. I am stupified that this has not happened.

[Lundgren is Founder and CEO, KCAA Radio, the first affiliate of Air America]

The House has approved an amendment that could prevent journalists from being forced to reveal their sources. Rep Alan Grayson (D-FL) introduced legislation that would prohibit the Department of Justice from being able to use funds to force reporters into revealing confidential sources or information.

Rep Grayson's amendment was added to the "Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act" and would open the doors for the first Federal shield law in the United States. The room erupted with applause when the legislation was passed with a 225-183 vote. Rep Grayson told the room that it is "completely incongruous" to claim that the US has freedom of the press while threatening to place journalists in jail over sources. He said that such an amendment is long overdue and demanded that a vote take place that night.

[Commentary] Anybody who's ever tried to stream a movie or use the web on a 3G or 4G LTE network knows it is no competition for a Wi-Fi connection, at least in terms of cost and reliability. And yet Comcast and Time Warner Cable, hilariously, want us to believe it is.

"I would also note that mobile wireless is rapidly becoming a viable alternative to cable broadband given the ever-increasing capabilities of LTE as well as continued advances in compression technology," Time Warner Cable CEO Robert Marcus said in a testimony in front of lawmakers.

Except that it's not.

"To call wireless broadband a current competitor to cable broadband is a bit of an insult to the average consumer's intelligence," said Bill Menezes, an analyst who specializes in mobile services at Gartner, the technology research firm.

People typically get Internet access at their homes by plugging a modem into a wall and paying a company like Comcast or Time Warner Cable every month for service. Marcus is saying that people could ditch these modems and instead use 4G hotspots -- devices that connect to a cellular network and give off a Wi-Fi signal -- as their primary way of accessing the Internet.

That's ridiculous -- at least right now. Mobile networks are not yet any kind of competition for broadband in terms of either cost or reliability, Menezes pointed out. Mobile data is much more expensive than data from a fixed network. With your wireless phone plan, you likely have to pay overage fees if you cross a relatively low data limit each month.

[Commentary] To break the cycle of repression we must look more closely at the tools protesters and reporters use and ask whether they further the cause of freedom  --  or just make speakers more vulnerable.

These tools fall under four categories:

1. Devices: We must support policies that defend everyone's right to record while adopting better technologies and applications to protect devices from shutdown and surveillance.
2. Applications: To be more accountable and transparent to users, these platforms must allow a full public view of every decision to block content. And these sites should invite feedback from users as a check against abuses.
3. Networks: To protect networks we need laws that right the imbalance between privacy and national security. And we must restore Net Neutrality to give users full control of their online experience.
4. Audiences: Technology has turned reporting into a two-way conversation between journalists and the their audiences. While audiences -- or what journalism scholar Jay Rosen calls "the people formerly known as 'the audience'" -- aren't technically tools, they do play a very important role in this new-media feedback loop. And the loop works best only when everyone can participate via open and secure networks.

[Karr is Senior Director of Strategy, Free Press]

A group of Western journalists from a number of news outlets was detained by pro-Russian militants in Eastern Ukraine.

CBS reporter Clarissa Ward and her news crew, along with BuzzFeed's Mike Giglio and reporters from Sky News, were held, blindfolded and interrogated for hours as they attempted was traveling to Slavyansk, a city that Ukrainian troops are trying to retake from pro-Russian groups. Ward told "CBS This Morning" that the group was stopped at a checkpoint and detained.

In anticipation of World Press Freedom Day, a new poll by Gallup found that people around the world think their media is becoming less free. Out of adults polled from 132 countries, a median of 26 percent of people said they did not have media freedom in 2013.

A median of only 63 percent said that they felt a lot of freedom, representing a new low since 2010.

Of the countries polled, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, Gabon and Syria had the lowest perceived media freedom, respectively, according to their residents. 69 percent of adults polled in the Congo said that the media is not free -- a 21 percent change since 2010. Syria, the fourth most unfree nation on the list, was the deadliest place for journalists in 2013 for the second year in a row, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. At least 70 journalists were killed in 2013 worldwide, 29 of whom died covering the crisis in Syria.

On the opposite end, the Netherlands, Finland and Germany had the highest perceived media freedom, with 95 percent of residents in the Netherlands reporting strong media freedom. 85 percent of Americans reported feeling free, while 14 percent said they did not.