Journalism

[Commentary] Soon, a new law against hate speech will go into effect in Germany, fining Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media companies up to €50 million if they fail to take down illegal content from their sites within 24 hours of being notified. For more ambiguous content, companies will have seven days to decide whether to block the posts. The rule is Germany’s attempt to fight hate speech and fake news, both of which have risen online since the arrival of more than a million refugees in the last two years. Germany isn’t alone in its determination to crack down on these kinds of posts. For the past year, most of Europe has been in an intense and fascinating debate about how to regulate, who should regulate, and even whether to regulate illegal and defamatory online content.

Unlike the US, where we rely on corporate efforts to tackle the problems of fake news and disinformation online, the European Commission and some national governments are wading into the murky waters of free speech, working to come up with viable ways to stop election-meddling and the violence that has resulted from false news reports.

[Anya Schiffrin is the director of the Technology, Media and Communications specialization at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.]

Press groups including the Radio-Television Digital News Association have called on the mayor of St. Louis to include the treatment of reporters in the city's investigation of how police handled riots there. That came in a letter to Mayor Lyda Krewson.

The mayor pledged to investigate police conduct during protests in mid-September of the acquittal of a former police officer's shooting of a black man, Krewson has also called for a separate investigation by the US Attorney's office. The press groups applauded those, but added that "thorough consideration" of press treatment needed to be part of the equation. The Committee to Protect Journalists said 10 members of the press were arrested while covering the protests according to a database that tracks press freedom.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai got a grilling from Democratic members of the House Communications Subcommittee, who were unhappy with his deregulatory thrust and his perceived failure to sufficiently parry the President's threats against TV licenses. Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-NJ) was among a host of Democrats who upbraided the chairman for what they said was a delayed, and "tepid," as Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA) put it, response to the President's tweeted threats against TV licenses and NBC over a news story he called fake.

Chairman Pai said he had repeated "again and again and again" that the First Amendment must be and would be at the heart of the FCC's work, including journalists reporting as they see fit without government interference. He said that was why he opposed a news diversity study under his predecessor. Chairman Pai said his record is clear, but that presidential attacks on the press were not new. But it was not as clear to Democrats that the chairman was not leaving room in his past statements for actions beyond just not pulling licenses. Pressed for more clarity from Pallone, Pai committed to not affecting license transfers in other ways due to the content of newscasts, not to launch investigations based on the content of newscasts, and that the FCC would not retaliate against companies based on the content of newscasts.

[Commentary] Kenyans go to the polls for the second time Oct 26 to stage a redo of the country’s presidential election in August. In the months leading up to the initial vote, Kenyans faced a barrage of misleading information through print, TV, radio, and social media. The atmosphere, fraught with memories of violence during 2007 presidential election, peaked with the torture and murder of an election official just days before the polls opened.

Days before the August election, Facebook rolled out an educational tool to help Kenyan users spot fake news: quick tips for spotting fake news, such as, “be skeptical of headlines” or “some stories are intentionally false.” Facebook is an important information channel in Kenya, reaching six million people, out of an estimated 37.7 million internet users, and Kenyans desperately needed the critical-thinking skills to better navigate misinformation. But the platform’s last-minute tool paled in comparison with the long and contentious election run-up.

[Bebe Santa-Wood is a recent graduate of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, specializing in Human Rights and Communications. Tara Susman-Peña is senior technical advisor in the Center for Applied Learning & Impact (CALI) and the Information & Media practice at IREX.]

Facebook has been criticised for the worrying impact on democracy of its “downright Orwellian” decision to run an experiment seeing professional media removed from the main news feed in six countries. The experiment, which began 19 Oct and is still ongoing, involves limiting the core element of Facebook’s social network to only personal posts and paid adverts. So-called public posts, such as those from media organisation Facebook pages, are being moved to a separate “explore” feed timeline. As a result, media organisations in the six countries containing 1% of the world’s population – Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Bolivia, Cambodia, Serbia and Slovakia – have had one of their most important publishing platforms removed overnight.

“The Facebook explore tab killed 66% of our traffic. Just destroyed it … years of really hard work were just swept away,” says Dina Fernandez, a journalist and member of the editorial board at Guatemalan news site Soy502. “It has been catastrophic, and I am very, very worried.” For those who rely on Facebook to campaign politically, share breaking news, or keep up to date with the world, that might be a concerning thought. “I’m worried about the impact of Facebook on democracy,” said Fernandez. “One company in particular has a gigantic control on the flow of information worldwide. This alone should be worrisome. It’s downright Orwellian.”

The Federal Communications Commission eliminated the broadcast main studio rule. The Order retains the requirement that stations maintain a local or toll-free telephone number to ensure consumers have ready access to their local stations.

The main studio rule, adopted nearly 80 years ago, currently requires each AM radio, FM radio, and television broadcast station to have a main studio located in or near its local community. The rule was implemented to facilitate input from community members and the station’s participation in community activities. The Commission recognizes that today the public can access information via broadcasters’ online public file, and stations and community members can interact directly through alternative means such as e-mail, social media, and the telephone. Given this, the Commission found that requiring broadcasters to maintain a main studio is outdated and unnecessarily burdensome. Elimination of the main studio rule should produce substantial cost-saving benefits for broadcasters that can be directed toward such things as programming, equipment upgrades, newsgathering, and other services that benefit consumers. It will also make it easier for broadcasters to prevent stations in small towns from going dark and to launch new stations in rural areas.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said he has not talked to the White House about his response to the President's tweets about challenging broadcast licenses. President Donald Trump, unhappy with an NBC News story be branded fake and fiction, had tweeted that someone ought to challenge the licenses and they should be revoked, "if necessary."

Chairman Pai was asked repeatedly about the issue in a press conference following the FCC meeting Oct 24. Asked if the President or White House had reached out to him on the license challenge issue, Pai said no. The chairman was asked about why it took him so long to respond to the President's tweets. Chairman Pai countered that he responded the first time he was asked, which response had been to reiterate that he supports the First Amendment, that the FCC is an independent agency, and to say that the FCC can't pull a license over the content of a newscast, no matter who asked it to. Chairman Pai said that his independence as a regulator was clear and suggested that the focus on his response was politically motivated. "I understand that those who oppose my agenda would like me to be distracted by the controversy of the day," he said.

The chairman would not say whether he thought the President's threats had had a chilling effect on the First Amendment, sticking with a regulator's answer that he was going to apply the facts and the law and make the appropriate decision. The FCC can actually pull a license over content in specific circumstances, but those don't include what news stories are covered or how they are covered.

As more and more people get at least some of their news from social platforms, this study showcases perspectives on what the increasingly distributed environment looks like in day-to-day media lives. Drawing from thirteen focus groups conducted in four cities across the United States, we sample voices of residents who reflect on their news habits, the influence of algorithms, local news, brands, privacy concerns, and what all this means for journalistic business models.

While our overall study complicates any notion of a singular audience with singular wants, it offered insights from varied perspectives that may be of value for both publishers and platforms:

• Publishers and platforms interested in rebuilding and maintaining relationships of trust with audiences should invest in media literacy that includes a) skills for verifying brands, b) algorithm literacy, and c) privacy literacy. Effectively tackling these areas will require a shift in attitude and strategy for platform companies—reluctant companies should note the risk of losing users alienated by the opacity of their operations. However, it must be noted that algorithmic transparency is required before algorithmic literacy can be achieved.
• Platforms should note that strategies to prolong engagement by exposing users to perspectives only with which they agree may backfire as some people turn away from platforms due to perceived echo chambers.
• Additional research is needed to monitor existing efforts to increase the visibility of local news on social platforms, though there is likely a need for platform companies to do more in addressing this critical element of the news ecosystem.
• Platforms and other stakeholders committed to verification should take note of public skepticism regarding quick fixes to the challenge of fake news and the nuance required to not only address “imposter content” and “fabricated content,” but also the absence or presence of partisan content.
• Publishers should approach business models such as native advertising and sponsored links with caution given their potential to jeopardize relationships of trust with readers. However, additional research and a dedicated study of audience attitudes toward journalistic business models would be valuable.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders doesn’t like the media’s tone these days. “I’ve never been attacked more, questioned more. I was called a liar by a major network in an official statement, I’ve been called outrageous things on air, and it goes unquestioned, no pushback,” said Sanders. “I do think that there is a greater sense of hostility that I’ve seen in this administration than in previous, and I think that you see that reflected in the numbers, in the coverage,” said Sanders, who cited a study showing that 93 percent of the coverage was negative and 7 percent positive.

Indeed, studies have shown overwhelmingly negative coverage of President Donald Trump in the mainstream media. “If you compare that to the first nine months of the the Obama administration, it was 40-60, so for people to pretend like there isn’t a greater sense of hostility toward this administration, I think, would be to ignore real facts.”

[Commentary] Many Democrats have decried this Federal Communications Commission decision benefiting Sinclair, a conservative broadcaster with ties to Breitbart News. And while some conservatives are cheering the deal, the implications of FCC actions are troubling for most. The nonsensical decision to reinstitute the UHF discount will also open the door for NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox to buy local TV stations reaching more than 70 percent of US homes. Anyone who understands how these big media companies operate can see the danger. By owning local stations, the New York-based media networks could dictate local news coverage. With the planned elimination of the local studio rule, they will have a green light to do so.

Before approving the Sinclair merger, the FCC has a duty to engage in a comprehensive and open media-ownership proceeding — one that seeks public comment and input from Congress. Anything less raises questions about impartiality and jeopardizes the integrity of the commission. Eliminating ownership rules that have served us well for more than 30 years is a momentous change. The American people must play a role in that decision.

[Christopher Ruddy is chief executive of Newsmax Media.]