Diversity

We’ve heard lots about Silicon Valley’s toxic culture this summer — its harassing venture capitalists, its man-child CEOs, its abusive nondisparagement agreements. Those stories have focused on how that culture harms those in the industry — the women and people of color who’ve been patronized, passed over, pushed out and, in this latest case, told they’re biologically less capable of doing the work in the first place. But what happens in Silicon Valley doesn’t stay in Silicon Valley. It comes into our homes and onto our screens, affecting all of us who use technology, not just those who make it. It’s bad enough for apps to showcase sexist or racially tone-deaf jokes or biases. But in many cases, those same biases are also embedded somewhere much more sinister — in the powerful (yet invisible) algorithms behind much of today’s software.

Many black-oriented newspapers – some more than a century old – have seen a slow decline in circulation in recent years, mirroring the overall decline in newspaper circulation. Both print and television Hispanic media, on the other hand, have enjoyed relative strength over the last decade, but that growth has now slowed. As the two largest Spanish-language television networks in the US, Univision and Telemundo are key providers of news for Spanish speakers. While viewership for some shows on these networks was roughly flat or even increased in 16, viewership for each network’s largest news program decreased at least slightly.

Black-oriented newspapers are a long-standing minority news sector in the US. The black press trade association (National Newspaper Publishers Association) currently lists around 150 members on its website, but few of these papers have regularly audited circulation figures, making it difficult to acquire audience figures for the sector as a whole. There are, however, some black-oriented newspapers – most of which are weekly or semiweekly – with recent circulation data available through the main audit bureaus that can serve as indicators. Among these, the data show that African American newspapers with a substantial amount of paid circulation either lost circulation or held steady from 2015 to 2016. For a number of mostly free-distribution newspapers, circulation results were more mixed.

House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Mike Doyle (D-PA) wrote to Republican Committee leaders with a list of eight additional witnesses that they say should be added for the full committee hearing on the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality hearing. The two Democratic Committee leaders wrote that it is the responsibility of the Minority to balance the panel of witnesses at hearings before the committee. Reps Pallone and Doyle have selected the following individuals to be invited to testify:

Jonathan Jackson is a co-founder and the Head of Corporate Branding for Blavity.
Ruth Livier is an actress, writer, and doctoral student who is a pioneer in the fight for equal representation in media.
Jesse Vollmar is co-founder and CEO of FarmLogs,
Myrna Morales is an expert in library science in Boston.
Johari Farrar is a performer with the Truthworker Theater Company.
Brandi Collins is the Senior Campaign Director for Media and Economic Justice at Color of Change.
Steven Renderos is the Organizing Director at the Center for Media Justice.
Bryan Mercer is the Executive Director of Media Mobilizing Project.

In making decisions about the limits of free speech, Facebook often fails the racial, religious and sexual minorities CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he wants to protect. The 13-year-old social network is wrestling with the hardest questions it has ever faced as the de facto arbiter of speech for the third of the world’s population that now logs on each month. In February, amid mounting concerns over Facebook’s role in the spread of violent live videos and fake news, Zuckerberg said the platform had a responsibility to “mitigate the bad” effects of the service in a more dangerous and divisive political era. In June, he officially changed Facebook’s mission from connecting the world to community-building. The company says it now ­deletes about 288,000 hate-speech posts a month. But activists say that Facebook’s censorship standards are so unclear and biased that it is impossible to know what one can or cannot say.

The result: Minority groups say they are disproportionately censored when they use the ­social-media platform to call out racism or start dialogues. “Facebook is regulating more human speech than any government does now or ever has,” said Susan Benesch, director of the Dangerous Speech Project, a nonprofit group that researches the intersection of harmful online content and free speech. “They are like a de facto body of law, yet that law is a secret.”

A Georgia federal judge dismissed a class-action racial discrimination lawsuit filed by one current and one former CNN employee against the network's parent company Time Warner. The lawsuit had alleged racial discrimination at the news organization for more than 20 years, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The two black men who filed the lawsuit alleged they were compensated less than their white co-workers, were denied promotions and pay increases and that the “Defendants have engaged in a pattern and practice of racial discrimination in performance evaluations, compensations, promotions and terminations."

A diverse group of stakeholders is launching a new foundation to help diverse content creators find distribution. The Creative Thread Foundation is billed as a "a non-profit organization focused on breaking down barriers of entry for underrepresented content creators and those working behind the scenes in media and entertainment."

The coalition was launched in Washington on July 26, with the blessing and support of the Congressional Multicultural Media Caucus chairs Reps Tony Cardenas (D-CA), Yvette Clarke (D-NY), and Judy Chu (D-CA) and with an assist from co-founder and Fusion TV Correspondent Kimberly Brooks. Founding partners, there are over 60 of them, include everyone from Viacom, 21st Century Fox, Disney, Amazon, Fusion, the National Association of Broadcasters and AT&T, to Black Mamas Matter and Green 2.0.

[Commentary] Minority-owned small businesses need two things to compete and thrive in an economy that is dominated more and more each year by global megafirms: a level playing field where everyone plays by the same rules of the road and stable and certain regulations that maximize their ability to invest and grow. This is true in the brick and mortar business world and even more so in the increasingly vital digital world, where a handful of dominant tech giants can use monopoly control over gateway services like search and social media and their ability to mine and exploit massive troughs of consumer data to choke off competition. That’s why the Federal Communications Commission’s plan to reform the internet regulations known as “net neutrality” is so important.

Americans deserve a permanent, stable and evenhanded net neutrality law that protects our data and fair competition online. That is something that can only be accomplished by Congress, where bipartisan support clearly exists to make net neutrality the law of the land. A law would put net neutrality beyond politics, eliminate the need to rely on legal contortions like Title II, and boost fair competition and equal opportunity everywhere online.

[Harry C. Alford is president and CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce.]

Some 14% of US adults say they have been targeted for online harassment or abuse because of their political views, according to a new report from Pew Research Center. And while Republicans and Democrats are about equally likely to have been harassed online because of their political views (15% vs. 13%), there are some notable partisan differences in their views of the issue. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they have heard a great deal about the topic of online harassment (38% vs. 25%). In addition, a larger share of Democrats than Republicans (69% vs. 54%) consider online harassment to be a major problem.

Regardless of political affiliation, women in both parties are more likely than their male counterparts to view online harassment as a major problem, to think offensive content online isn’t taken seriously enough and to prioritize safe spaces over people being able to express themselves freely online.

Seattle’s Information Technology Department has won two awards from the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors for its efforts to foster digital inclusion within the city. The awards are:

• 2017 Community Broadband Strategic Plan of the Year, for Seattle’s Strategic Plan for Facilitating Equitable Access to Wireless Broadband
• 2017 Community Broadband Digital Equity Project of the Year, for Seattle’s Technology Matching Fund

Following the 2016 election, which had one of the largest gender gaps in history, women are more likely than men to say they are paying increased attention to politics. And while far more Democrats than Republicans say they have attended a political event, rally or protest since the election, Democratic women – especially younger women and those with postgraduate degrees – are among the most likely to have participated in such a political gathering.

The latest national survey by Pew Research Center, conducted June 27 to July 9 among 2,505 adults, finds that 52% of Americans say they are paying more attention to politics since Donald Trump’s election; 33% say they are paying about the same amount of attention, while 13% say they are paying less attention to politics. The new survey also finds that, nearly nine months after the election, most people (59%) say it is “stressful and frustrating” to talk about politics with people who have a different opinion of Trump than they do; just 35% find such conversations “interesting and informative."