National Public Radio

A transcription of a segment on The Indicator from Planet Money, "Why Your Intenet Sucks." 

One question that comes up regularly in one form or another from listeners: Why does our Internet suck so badly? And I can understand if you live in a rural area where, you know, it's inevitably patchy service, you know, it's hard to connect people. But 80% of people in the US live in urban areas, where we're all clustered together, which means we should be easy to service, right? And yet, our Internet sucks, too. Why is that? 

Distance learning in the pandemic highlights a problem that experts have warned about for years - some students have good access to the Internet, and others do not. It's called the digital divide. Many districts are about to start the school year with more distance learning, so how can they narrow that divide? Nicol Turner Lee thinks it's important for schools to put together what she calls the 21st-century remote access blueprint.

Dozens of foreign nationals working as journalists in the US for Voice of America, the federal government's international broadcaster, will not have their visas extended once they expire. Michael Pack, the new CEO of the US Agency for Global Media, signaled he will not approve the visa extensions. The foreign journalists are particularly valued for their language skills, which are crucial to VOA's mission as an international broadcaster.

New US Agency for Global Media CEO Michael Pack swept into office like a man on a mission, firing the top executives and advisory boards of federally funded international broadcasters.

Tensions between President Donald Trump and Twitter escalated as he threatened to "strongly regulate" or shut down social media platforms, which he accused of silencing conservative viewpoints. President Trump's threat came the day after Twitter added a fact-check warning to his tweets claiming that mail-in ballots are fraudulent. "Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices," President Trump tweeted the morning of May 27. "We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.