Washington Post

[Commentary] In June, the Supreme Court overturned former Virginia governor Robert McDonnell’s conviction for corruption in a unanimous decision. McDonnell had been convicted of corruption for allegedly using the governor’s office to enrich himself by personally hosting events promoting a friend’s business ventures in exchange for more than $165,000 in gifts and loans. The court ruled that his actions were not corrupt because they were not official acts. In effect, the court has defined corruption in a way that requires prosecutors to prove an explicit quid pro quo agreement. This narrow definition is out of line with both public opinion and scholarly research on corruption.

I have argued that looking for bright-line distinctions between corrupt and non-corrupt acts is futile: Rules, roles, and conceptions of justice keep changing, because they are inherently controversial — and so are constantly being revised in further political struggles. First one side defines corruption in a particular way; then another group makes efforts to pull the definition closer to what it thinks. We have seen this shift in our lifetimes. Such controversies over the limits of power are healthy for democracy. In fact, it is less remarkable that the justices have defined corruption in narrow ways than that we expected them to resolve the question in the first place.

[Michael Johnston is the Charles A. Dana professor of political science emeritus at Colgate University.]

[Commentary] The balloons have already been stuffed into the rafters. The nominee is already known. The story lines are few. Yet 15,000 journalists — six for every one of the 2,500 delegates here — have encamped for the Republican National Convention.

Despite the news media’s exhaustively chronicled (by the news media) financial problems, there seems to be no slowdown in the intensity and investment by media companies in covering Donald Trump’s now-inevitable coronation as the party’s standard-bearer. The central media corridor, a kind of wonk Woodstock (with better food), is an arcade along East Fourth Street, adjacent to Quicken Loans Arena. The question is: Why are so many gathered for what is largely a scripted and preordained event? Barring unforeseen developments — and political conventions are engineered to avert unforeseen developments — the political conventions may be the least efficient news events that the media covers.

For Yahoo, it's nearly all over but the shouting. Final bids are expected July 18 in the protracted sale of the core Internet business at Yahoo and it likely won't be long before we know the fate of both the faded Internet company and its embattled CEO, Marissa Mayer. When the shouting does come, it's likely to include even more analysis about Mayer's tenure -- what her time at the helm will say about women in technology, what she could have done differently, how she might spend the $55 million in severance she could receive in the event of a change in control.

Many will fault some of her big decisions: Big bets that didn't pay off, such as the $1.1 billion acquisition of the blogging service Tumblr, and key hires who didn't pan out. She promised the web browser Mozilla a lucrative change-in-control deal that could cost bidders more than $1 billion. But others will say that Mayer, like other women before her in technology, was dealt a tough hand in the first place, accepting a particularly precarious leadership role often known as the "glass cliff." Research has shown that women disproportionately receive opportunities to lead at difficult times, and the tech sector would seem to have a preponderance of examples.

Many in the tech industry are already none too pleased with the idea of a President Trump. But Trump's selection of Gov Mike Pence (R-IN) may drive them even further from the Republican ticket.

For starters, Gov Pence is at odds with one of the wealthiest, most popular companies on the planet: Apple. He and the company's chief executive, Tim Cook, faced off in 2015 over a bill that let business owners and workers cite religious objections as a reason not to serve customers. The result, said Cook, would lead to unjust discrimination against consumers based on their physical appearance or sexual orientation. The bill was widely criticized by execs across Silicon Valley, including from Twitter, Yelp, Lyft and LinkedIn.

[Commentary] The Post fact-checking team has a fun look at more than a year of statements by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. You’ll be startled to hear that they concluded that Trump lies a lot more often than Clinton does — and a lot more outrageously, too. Out of 52 statements by Trump, nearly two thirds were deserving of Four Pinnochios, which is to say that they were absurdly outrageous lies. Out of 35 statements by Clinton, a much smaller percentage qualified for that distinction.

However, they also made a point that I have not seen made anywhere else, one that sheds light on an important ongoing debate over how Trump and Clinton treat the press. They noted an important qualitative difference in the process of adjudication that goes on between each of their campaigns and the media. Even if you think Clinton's motives for stiff-arming the media are absurd, it should be acknowledged that her attitude towards it it simply has no equivalence to Trump’s total contempt for the basic functional role of the news media in our democracy. His entire campaign is functionally an exercise in trying to get it to wither away and drop off of our body politic, like a gangrenous limb or frostbitten finger.

Three scholars confirmed what we already knew about social media — or at least had suspected. In a draft paper called “Echo Chambers on Facebook,” social scientists Walter Quattrociocchi, Antonio Scala and Cass Sunstein found quantitative evidence of how users tend to promote their favorite narratives, form polarized groups and resist information that doesn’t conform to their beliefs. The study focused on how Facebook users interacted with two narratives involving conspiracy theories and science. Users belonging to different communities tended not to interact and tended to be connected only with “like-minded” friends, creating closed, non-interacting communities centered around different narratives — what the researchers called “echo chambers.” Confirmation bias accounted for users’ decisions to share certain content, creating informational cascades within their communities. Users tended to seek out information that strengthened their preferred narratives and to reject information that undermined it.

Alarmingly, when deliberately false information was introduced into these echo chambers, it was absorbed and viewed as credible as long as it conformed with the primary narrative. And even when when more truthful information was introduced to correct or “debunk” falsehoods, either it was ignored or it reinforced the users’ false beliefs. While the findings are cause for concern, they don’t come as much of a surprise — confirmation bias is nothing new, and conspiracy theories have become an increasingly visible part of our political discussion. The question is whether there is anything a responsible media can or should do differently to make it easier for facts to penetrate these echo chambers, and whether news organizations are willing to make the necessary changes.

[Commentary] In response to June’s mass shooting in Orlando (FL), Congress has been debating various proposals to combat home-grown terrorism. You’ve probably heard the most about measures to restrict gun purchases. But here’s what you may have missed: Lawmakers are also pushing to expand the FBI’s surveillance powers. And in a big way.

Sens John McCain (R-AZ) and Richard Burr (R-NC) offered an amendment eight days after the Orlando shooting that would allow FBI agents — without a court order — to capture a person’s email logs, IP address and Internet browsing history. To obtain a user’s records from a service provider, FBI investigators would need only their field supervisor to issue an administrative subpoena, known as a national security letter (NSL). The McCain-Burr amendment fell just two votes short of the 60 needed for final action. But the Senate will very likely try again. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has reserved the option to reintroduce the McCain-Burr amendment at a later date. Two other Senate bills under consideration contain nearly identical language. So will the United States authorize the FBI to monitor Internet and email activity at its own discretion? If Congress really wants to prevent the FBI from using national security letters to collect and keep private records at its own discretion, as broadly as it wishes, for any purpose, it must write minimization requirements into law.

[EJ Graff is a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. William Bendix is assistant professor of political science at Keene State College. Paul J. Quirk is professor and Phil Lind Chair in US Politics at the University of British Columbia.]

[Commentary] Journalists commonly divide information from persuasion, as when they separate the “news” from the “opinion” section, or “reporters” from “columnists.” This is fine as far as it goes (and they get criticized harshly when they don’t honor this norm), but the distinction won’t help much in understanding why the 2016 campaign has been such an intellectual challenge for the media. Everything that happens in election coverage is premised on a kind of opinion: that our votes should be based on reliable information about what the candidates intend to do if elected. Remove that assumption and the edifice crashes. But this is exactly what the candidacy of Donald Trump does. It upends the assumptions required for the traditional forms of campaign journalism even to make sense.

Journalists may need to collaborate across news brands in ways they have never known. They may have to call Trump out with a forcefulness unseen before. They may have to risk the breakdown of decorum in interviews and endure excruciating awkwardness. Hardest of all, they will have to explain to the public that Trump is a special case, and the normal rules do not apply.

[Jay Rosen teaches journalism at New York University and writes the blog PressThink.]

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba introduced its first automobile, the RX5 sport utility vehicle, set to be delivered to customers in August. The company called the vehicle, made with Chinese carmaker SAIC, the first “Internet car” in a news release. It will run software developed by Alibaba’s YunOS division to connect with other smart devices, the company said. It will retail for 148,800 yuan, or $22,300.

Alibaba in its announcement said the car will use the company’s own e-commerce platform to deliver such services as finding parking spaces, locating gas stations or making restaurant reservations. Drivers will also be able to pay for services from the car using “Alipay.” Different drivers and passengers will be able to use their own Alibaba accounts, similar to Amazon.com accounts, for individual access to services and payment. The car will also use those accounts to recommend services such as music or destinations. Those predictive software aspects make auto developers think Alibaba has entered the auto space with an eye toward autonomous vehicles. The YunOS software, industry analysts say, is Alibaba’s entry point to allow its cars to communicate with other vehicles and nearby businesses, making a strong step toward connected and autonomous vehicles.

[Commentary] What could be more open and democratic than a debate? For all the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth now taking place over the massive amounts of free media bestowed upon Donald Trump, it was his dominating performance in the televised debates that allowed him to separate himself from the pack. Yet the debates themselves were an exercise in faux democracy. What really mattered, especially early on, was who got invited, who got to stand where and who was allowed to speak the most. Unfortunately, the media organizations that ran the debates (along with the Republican National Committee) relied on polls to make those decisions right from the very first encounter in August.

Needless to say, news organizations have been reveling in the ratings they received from their Trump-centric, made-for-television extravaganzas. But we’re choosing a president, not who should get fired during the next episode of “The Apprentice.” We should demand that our media give us more democracy — and trust that the public will find it interesting enough to watch.

[Dan Kennedy is an associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University in Boston (MA)]