Censorship

President Donald Trump has threatened press freedoms before, but on Oct 11 he went a step further: suggesting that television networks lose their federal broadcast licenses for what he considers “fake news.” In comments to reporters in the Oval Office, President Trump said, “It is frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write, and people should look into it.”

The remarks alarmed 1st Amendment advocates for suggesting the use of government power to punish the media, recalling for many the threats of President Richard Nixon. “The founders of our nation set as a cornerstone of our democracy the 1st Amendment, forever enshrining and protecting freedom of the press," said Gordon Smith, president of the National Association of Broadcasters and a former Republican senator from Oregon. “It is contrary to this fundamental right for any government official to threaten the revocation of an FCC license simply because of a disagreement with the reporting of a journalist,” he said. Asked whether there should be limits on what journalists can write, President Trump softened his tone. “No. The press should speak more honestly,” he said. “I’ve seen tremendously dishonest press. It’s not even a question of distortion.”

President Trump’s threat to pull NBC’s license doesn’t make sense for a lot of reasons — starting with the fact that NBC doesn’t have a license to begin with. But it is still alarming to news outlets, because federal regulations aren’t clear about whether federal regulators can intervene to stop “fake” news.

You might assume the First Amendment protects all reporting. But current Federal Communications Commission language leaves open the possibility of government intervention, under certain narrow conditions. “The president has no authority to direct the FCC to revoke a broadcast license,” said former Federal Communications Commission lawyer Robert Corn-Revere. “The FCC is an independent regulatory agency.” But presidents can still exert influence — especially since they appoint all five FCC commissioners. And the FCC may exert influence, too. But no one can say for sure how heavy its hand might be. The FCC states on its website that it will investigate stations accused of deliberately distorting the news, but that the burden of proof is high. The commission says it will generally not intervene in cases in which viewers believe stations have “aired inaccurate or one-sided news reports or comments, covered stories inadequately, or overly dramatized the events that they cover” because “it would be inconsistent with the First Amendment to replace the journalistic judgment of licensees with our own.” The FCC’s policy on intentional “distortion” is a troubling one for television companies, according to Mark Schnieder, a former FCC lawyer and adjunct law professor at Georgetown University Law School.

President Donald Trump made two things clear when he told reporters gathered in the Oval Office that “it's frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write, and people should look into it.” One: He does not value a free press. Two: He does not even understand how a free press works.

It is simply untrue that “the press is able to write whatever they want to write.” News outlets that defame or invade the privacy of the people they cover can be sued into extinction. Just ask Gawker, which went bankrupt and shuttered last year after losing a case brought by Hulk Hogan.

President Donald Trump is yet again threatening to crack down on media outlets he doesn't like. But this time he's doing it in a much more brazen fashion. And it's almost exactly what Richard Nixon appeared to attempt in the 1970s. The difference here is that Nixon talked about the scheme only privately. Nixon allies challenged the licenses of TV stations whose owners ran afoul of Nixon. And those owners were The Washington Post Co.

Framing the freedom of the press to cover what it deems important as “disgusting” is remarkable coming from any American politician, much less the president while sitting in the Oval Office. But it serves as a reminder that, for all of the focus placed on President Donald Trump’s relationship with and emulation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, there’s another autocrat with whom he has had a friendly relationship and interests in common: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan, perhaps more directly than Putin, moved early to line up allies in the Trump administration. In August of 2016, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s consulting firm entered into a business arrangement with Inovo BV, a Dutch consulting firm owned by a Turkish businessman with ties to Erdogan. At the same time, Flynn was a key aide to Trump. On the day of the election itself, Nov. 8, an opinion piece written by Flynn ran at The Hill. It was titled, “Our ally Turkey is in crisis and needs our support.” “The U.S. media is doing a bang-up job of reporting the Erdogan government’s crackdown on dissidents,” Flynn wrote, “but it’s not putting it into perspective.”

Would you say that people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions in public, even those that are deeply offensive to other people; or that government should prevent people from engaging in hate speech against certain groups in public? That choice kicked off a lengthy survey on free speech and tolerance that will be released later in Oct by The Cato Institute, which collaborated with YouGov, the market research firm, to collect responses. The final data set was drawn from answers to scores of questions provided by 2,300 people.

[Commentary] The greatest concern today for our communications industry might simply be this: Are we prepared to learn from history? Do we want to break the pattern of the past and disrupt the political bargains of yesterday that have lessened free speech (for example, the fairness doctrine) and shielded incumbents from competitive entry (for example, the long-standing power of television broadcasters)? If so, the answer is to stop the intrusive government control that favors some companies over others. It is time to stop “mother may I” regulations.
[Babette Boliek is an associate professor of law and the associate dean of Faculty Research and Development at Pepperdine University School of Law]

China has built a new wall, in cyberspace — the largest system of Internet censorship, control and surveillance in the world, nicknamed the Great Firewall of China. Thirty years on, it is extending those controls even further.

Since passing its broad new Cybersecurity Law in June 2017, the Communist Party has rolled out new regulations — and steps to enforce existing ones — that reflect its desire to control and exploit every inch of the digital world, experts say. Today, the Great Firewall is being built not just around the country, to keep foreign ideas and uncomfortable truths out, but around every individual, computer and smartphone, in a society that has become the most digitally connected in the world. The Cyberspace Administration of China effectively ended online anonymity here by making Internet companies responsible for ensuring that anyone who posts anything is registered with their real name. It has cracked down on the VPN (virtual private network) systems that netizens have used to jump the firewall and evade censorship, with Apple agreeing to remove VPN providers from its Chinese App Store in July and authorities detaining a local software developer for three days last month for selling similar services. And authorities dramatically expanded their controls over what people say in private online chat groups, making anyone who sets up a chat group legally responsible for its content and requiring Internet companies to establish systems to rate and score the online conduct of users — to ensure they follow the Communist Party line and promote “socialist core values.”

China has largely blocked the WhatsApp messaging app, the latest move by Beijing to step up surveillance ahead of a big Communist Party gathering in Oct. The disabling in mainland China of the Facebook-owned app is a setback for the social media giant, whose chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has been pushing to re-enter the Chinese market, and has been studying the Chinese language intensively. WhatsApp was the last of Facebook products to still be available in mainland China; the company’s main social media service has been blocked in China since 2009, and its Instagram image-sharing app is also unavailable. In mid-July, Chinese censors began blocking video chats and the sending of photographs and other files using WhatsApp, and they stopped many voice chats, as well. But most text messages on the app continued to go through normally. The restrictions on video, audio chats and file sharing were at least temporarily lifted after a few weeks. WhatsApp now appears to have been broadly disrupted in China, even for text messages. The blocking of WhatsApp text messages suggests that China’s censors may have developed specialized software to interfere with such messages, which rely on an encryption technology that is used by few services other than WhatsApp.

How can news outlets improve their standing in the eyes of the public? If a study published by Northwestern University in Qatar is any indication, then the key to a higher level of trust might be a lower level of free speech.

Northwestern surveyed seven Middle Eastern countries and found that citizens in six of them ascribe more credibility to their press than Americans do to theirs — by wide margins, in some cases. In the United Arab Emirates, for example, 85 percent of citizens say the media is credible; the rates are 62 percent in Qatar and 59 percent in Saudi Arabia. Only 32 percent of Americans trust the media to report the news fully, fairly and accurately, according to Gallup. While these Middle Eastern credibility ratings sound great, they are attended by brutal restrictions on journalists. Reporters Without Borders rates countries' press freedoms, using such criteria as access to public records, censorship and safety. Out of 180 countries, the United Arab Emirates ranks 119, Qatar ranks 123 and Saudi Arabia ranks 168.