Benton Institute for Broadband & Society - Craig Aaron

Shout it with me: FCC is bringing back net neutrality

Grace Tepper — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 15:46:57 +0000

Millions of people have called on the Federal Communications Commission to protect the free and open internet — backed by the authority of Title II of the Communications Act — registering more public comments on this issue than any other in the agency’s history. Now, under the leadership of FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel — who had to wait two years to act until the Senate filled a vacant seat on the commission — net neutrality, gutted under the Trump administration, is back on the docket. A new vote to restore it is set for April 25 at the FCC. Without Title II authority, the FCC can’t protect user privacy, promote broadband competition, eliminate hidden junk fees and other scams, or step in when monopoly-minded internet service providers do you wrong. During the height of the pandemic, for example, the FCC was left begging companies not to cut off service because the agency lacked the legal mandate to make demands of AT&T, Charter, Comcast and Verizon. The draft order released in April 2024 by Rosenworcel and her staff would fix these problems and restore the agency’s rightful authority over internet access services. In the remaining days before a final vote, we’re likely to see an upsurge in industry fueled misinformation and long-debunked claims. The truth is that net neutrality is so necessary because it’s how the internet has always worked — and it’s what makes possible an internet where people can make their own choices, not just pick from a fixed menu dictated and filtered by a few giant gatekeepers.

[Craig Aaron is the co-CEO of Free Press and Free Press Action, which aim to give people a say in policy decisions that shape media and technology.]

Benton Content:

https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/shout-it-with-me-fcc-is-bringing-back-net-n…

Teaser:

The truth is that net neutrality is so necessary because it’s how the internet has always worked.

Source:

Seattle Times

Author:

Craig Aaron

Send date:

Thu, 04/25/2024

Daily Digest:

Daily Digest 4/24/2024

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Wed, 04/24/2024

Coverage Type:

Op-Ed

Agenda

Upcoming policy issue

Digital Equity/Digital Inclusion

Digital Divide

Federal Agency

Federal Communications Commission

Internet/Broadband

Universal Broadband

Regulatory classification

Level of Government

Federal

Network Neutrality

Happy Anniversary, Free Press!

dclay@benton.org — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:28:29 +0000

Free Press turns 20 on Aug. 14 — marking two decades of our fight to transform our media system. As this date has approached, I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of sharing our history and telling our own story. Over the next six months, leading up to the 20th-anniversary celebration we’re planning in Washington (DC) for next spring, my colleagues and I are going to use this space to revisit some of our biggest accomplishments — many of which are highlighted on this newly updated timeline — and tell the story of how Free Press has grown and changed over the past 20 years. The full Free Press story — the more interesting if longer and nuanced one — is one of transformation. It’s a story of an organization willing to experiment, move and change. Maybe not always as fast as everyone would like, or maybe too fast for others. And, of course, not without mistakes. But with so many, many more successes. At Free Press, we are committed to transforming the media to realize a just society, to building an enduring multiracial democracy in this country, to being an organization that lives up to those values.

Benton Content:

https://www.freepress.net/blog/happy-anniversary-free-press

Teaser:

Free Press turned 20 on Aug. 14

Source:

Free Press

Author:

Craig Aaron

Send date:

Wed, 08/16/2023

Daily Digest:

Daily Digest 8/15/2023

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Tue, 08/15/2023

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Biden Wins. Trumpism Endures. What Free Press Is Doing Next.

Robbie McBeath — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 17:59:17 +0000

While we’ll remain vigilant for whatever a lame-duck President Donald Trump — or let’s face it, the year 2020 — might bring, we will be putting our collective energy toward repairing the damage done over the past four years, while diligently working to expand what’s possible in a Joe Biden administration and new Congress. Our immediate priorities include:

Influencing presidential appointments.
Winning Net Neutrality in 2021.
Ending the digital divide — for real — in the next four years. This effort starts with a major push for broadband in the next massive recovery bill along the lines of the HEROES Act, which passed the House last May. With so many people trying to school their kids and do their jobs from home — the necessity of ubiquitous, affordable broadband is clearer than ever. Now is the moment to put ambitious goals on the table, to move from minutiae to moon shots, and to work to truly end the digital divide by the end of Biden’s first term.
Going to the Supreme Court. Our long-running case challenging the FCC’s repeated attempts to eradicate media-ownership limits without studying the impacts on ownership opportunities for women and people of color is headed to the highest court next year.
Reviving public media and local journalism.
Making media reparations a reality.
Confronting hate and disinformation on the platforms and the airwaves.
Defunding surveillance.

Benton Content:

https://www.freepress.net/our-response/expert-analysis/explainers/biden-wins-tru…

Teaser:

Our immediate priorities include ending the digital divide — for real — in the next four years.

Source:

Free Press

Author:

Craig Aaron

Jessica Gonzalez

Send date:

Mon, 11/16/2020

Daily Digest:

Daily Digest 11/13/2020

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Fri, 11/13/2020

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Groups Call on Congress to Fund Journalism and Treat Local News as Essential Service during Pandemic

benton — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 13:50:01 +0000

A coalition of more than 45 organizations and scholars has called on Congress to include vital funding for local news in the next coronavirus stimulus package. Free Press Action, PEN America, Common Cause, and other organizations urged the House and Senate leadership to consider local press an “essential service” vital to the nation’s health, prosperity, and recovery. The organizations ask Congress to allocate at least $5 billion to support local journalism in the next stimulus package. Specifically, they ask for support of public and community media in addition to creating an emergency fund to preserve newsrooms and reporting jobs. They also call for public investment to address the civic-information needs of those most impacted by the spread of news deserts across both rural and urban communities.

Benton Content:

https://www.freepress.net/sites/default/files/2020-04/Congress_Local_News_Stimul…

Teaser:

Funding to help local journalism

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Author:

Send date:

Thu, 04/09/2020

Daily Digest:

Daily Digest 4/8/2020

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Wed, 04/08/2020

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Headlines Specific Topic:

Coronavirus and Connectivity

Voter Guide To Where 2020 Candidates Stand on Media and Tech Policy

Robbie McBeath — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 21:34:33 +0000

Free Press Action released its 2020 Right to Connect Voter Guide, an analysis of presidential candidates’ positions on vital media and technology policies. It analyzes the positions of nine Democratic and Republican presidential candidates polling at 3 percent or above in recent national polls. Sens Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) stand out for their proposals to invest billions to expand internet access and rein in steep broadband prices that keep low-income families and people of color offline. Sen Sanders has also offered the most concrete ideas to address the crisis in journalism.

Affordability: The price of broadband is too damn high for many people across the country. Among the Democratic candidates, Sen Sanders’ and Sen Warren’s proposals would do the most to address this crucial issue, and Warren highlights how race factors in the digital divide. Former Vice President Joe Biden, former Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen Klobuchar have also put forward strong proposals in support of digital equity, albeit with fewer details. And Biden, Sanders and Warren have all taken stands against extortionary prison-phone rates.

Reliable networks: As climate-related disasters worsen, the next president needs to focus on building resilient networks and protecting the communications needs of vulnerable communities. That should start with addressing the government’s neglect of Puerto Rico in the wake of destructive hurricanes and earthquakes. Sen Sanders has taken the strongest stance here, explicitly calling for “a full review of the post-disaster response to the communications crisis in Puerto Rico [to] ensure broadband and telecommunications services are swiftly restored.” His proposal includes plans to invest in equitable and resilient communications networks. Biden, Buttigieg and Warren have rightly focused on recovery in Puerto Rico. The other candidates haven’t said much

Net Neutrality: All of the leading Democratic candidates but two — Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg — have strongly and publicly endorsed Net Neutrality on the campaign trail. While Biden served as vice president under the Obama administration — whose Federal Communications Commission passed the strong 2015 Net Neutrality rules that the Trump administration gutted — he has thus far made no public statements about this issue. (However, he has held fundraisers with Comcast executives.)

[Craig Aaron is president and co-CEO of Free Press Action. Dana Floberg is a policy manager for Free Press Action.]

Benton Content:

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/01/30/your-emoji-based-guide-where-2020-…

https://righttoconnect2020.com/voter-guide

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7jeq7/bernie-sanders-and-elizabeth-warren-ar…

Teaser:

President Donald Trump gets all frowns, but Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren stand out for their proposals to invest billions to expand internet access and rein in steep broadband prices that keep low-income families and people of color offline.

Source:

Common Dreams

Author:

Craig Aaron

Dana Floberg

Send date:

Fri, 01/31/2020

Daily Digest:

Daily Digest 1/30/2020

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Publish Date:

Thu, 01/30/2020

Coverage Type:

Op-Ed

Emergency Communications

Internet/Broadband

Adoption

Network Neutrality

Why platforms should pay for polluting our civic discourse

Robbie McBeath — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 17:20:10 +0000

Targeted online ads and data harvesting are incredibly lucrative for the platforms but harmful for local newsrooms and the communities they’re supposed to serve. The shift in eyeballs and ad dollars to the platforms has hastened the collapse of the traditional advertising marketplace that once helped sustain quality local journalism. This collapse has led to widespread layoffs, which has meant less of the content that readers are willing to pay for, which has resulted in more cutbacks and the continuation of a vicious cycle. Quality journalism, in-depth investigative reporting and watchdogs on the beat are antidotes to mistrust and misinformation. So when the market is failing to provide the news we need, we can’t just shrug and hope that someone somewhere will come up with a new business model someday. We need to do something about it.

The Colorado Media Projects’s new report, Local News is a Public Good: Public Pathways for Supporting Coloradans’ Civic News and Information Needs in the 21st Century, lifts up a number of novel approaches that promise a path out of the current downward spiral. One of them is an idea my organization Free Press has proposed: taxing targeted online advertising to fund local journalism. In our report Beyond Fixing Facebook, we estimate that a 2 percent tax on targeted ads in the United States could generate $2 billion a year.

While a tax on targeted ads won’t solve all the problems facing journalism, it could go a long way toward ensuring there are fewer Denver Guardians — and more guardians of democracy keeping an eye on local officials, talking to local residents, and finding out what’s happening in our communities.

[Craig Aaron is the president and CEO of Free Press and Free Press Action.]

Benton Content:

https://medium.com/colorado-media-project/why-platforms-should-pay-for-polluting…

Teaser:

They should take responsibility for the mess they’ve made.

Source:

Medium

Author:

Craig Aaron

Send date:

Tue, 10/15/2019

Daily Digest:

Daily Digest 10/14/2019

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Mon, 10/14/2019

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House Democrats Should Reject Disingenuous Bid to Undermine the Save the Internet Act

Robbie McBeath — Fri, 24 May 2019 15:38:17 +0000

On May 23, Republican members of the House Commerce Committee published a letter led by Reps Josh Gottheimer (D–NJ) and Scott Peters (D–CA) proposing a so-called net neutrality working group to reconsider the Save the Internet Act, which passed the House in April with 232 votes. The letter mirrors a bid by Sen Kyrsten Sinema (D–AZ) and Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R–MS) to undermine the legislation before it receives a vote in the upper chamber. In response to the House letter, 32 public-interest organizations sent a letter to House Democratic leadership opposing the proposal from Reps Gottheimer and Peters.

"It has come to our attention that a letter is circulating signed by representatives that calls for a working group on net neutrality...that would abandon the Save the Internet Act. This is extremely troubling, and an affront to the millions of Americans from across the political spectrum who rely on an open internet and have called on Congress to support strong net neutrality. The Wicker-Sinema group—which the letter inaccurately holds up as a model for developing consensus on this issue—is led by two Senators who have declined to support the commonsense protections contained in the Save the Internet Act. In fact, Senator Sinema is the lone Democrat in Congress who has failed to endorse the Save the Internet Act...The Wicker-Sinema group and similar efforts are not a path to viable legislation, but rather a means to undermine the bill the House just passed, and the strong but flexible net neutrality framework it restores."

Benton Content:

https://www.freepress.net/news/press-releases/house-democrats-should-reject-disi…

https://s3.amazonaws.com/demandprogress/images/Public_interest_letter_opposing_H…

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190522/08102542260/house-dems-start-to-wimp-…

Teaser:

32 public-interest organizations sent a letter to House Democratic leadership opposing the proposal from Reps Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Scott Peters (D-CA).

Source:

Free Press

Author:

Craig Aaron

Send date:

Tue, 05/28/2019

Daily Digest:

Daily Digest 5/24/2019

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Not Available

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Publish Date:

Fri, 05/24/2019

Coverage Type:

Reporting

Internet/Broadband

Network Neutrality

Beyond Fixing Facebook

benton — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 15:40:45 +0000

The report calls for a tax on targeted online advertising to respond to the crisis in journalism and fund diverse, local, independent and non-commercial news and information. The report proposes a series of proposals to levy a small tax on ads sold by highly profitable companies like Facebook and Google. The proceeds would go to support local-news startups, sustain investigative projects, seed civic-engagement initiatives, and lift up diverse voices that have long been excluded from traditional media coverage. Under one Free Press proposal, a 2 percent ad tax on all online enterprises that in 2018 earned more than $200 million in annual digital-ad revenues would yield more than $1.8 billion a year for a new and independent Public Interest Media Endowment that would hand out grants to news and information projects.

Benton Content:

https://www.freepress.net/news/press-releases/free-press-calls-tax-targeted-ads-…

Teaser:

How the multibillion-dollar business behind online advertising could reinvent public media, revitalize journalism and strengthen democracy

Source:

Free Press

Author:

Timothy Karr

Craig Aaron

Send date:

Wed, 02/27/2019

Daily Digest:

Daily Digest 2/26/2019

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Publish Date:

Tue, 02/26/2019

Coverage Type:

Michael Copps Put the 'Public' in Public Servant

benton — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 11:38:46 +0000

The first trip I took as a Free Press staff member nearly 14 years ago was to St. Paul, Minnesota, where, on a rainy Thursday night, 700 people filling an auditorium and overflow room. Many of them lined up for hours and hours to stand at a microphone and testify about the problems of the media. I’d never seen anything like it. People were there because a couple of Commissioners from the Federal Communications Commission had a radical idea: They should actually go out and listen to the public. On another rainy night recently in Washington, I thought back to that trip and the many that followed. I was lucky enough to be invited to a dinner organized by the Benton Foundation to celebrate the legacy of FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps. Former commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Mignon Clyburn, numerous former Copps’ staffers, friends and allies gathered to toast the commissioner for his unwavering commitment to a more just and democratic media. Copps, now a Free Press board member and senior adviser to Common Cause, has many accomplishments to remember and celebrate — so many in fact that the Benton Foundation commissioned a historical study of his decade-long tenure at the FCC, The Media Democracy Agenda: The Strategy and Legacy of Federal Communications Commissioner Michael J. Copps.

[Craig Aaron is President and CEO of Free Press]

Benton Content:

https://www.freepress.net/our-response/expert-analysis/explainers/michael-copps-…

Teaser:

The report really is a strategic handbook for how to do this job.

Source:

Free Press

Author:

Craig Aaron

Send date:

Mon, 10/01/2018

Daily Digest:

Daily Digest 9/28/2018

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Not Available

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Publish Date:

Mon, 10/01/2018

Coverage Type:

Editorial

Policymakers

What's Next for Net Neutrality in Congress and the Courts

Robbie McBeath — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 20:39:13 +0000

[Commentary] With each congressional office getting thousands of calls for Network Neutrality and close to zero supporting Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai — and with Net Neutrality looking like a real issue in the 2018 elections — we’ve got a shot at passing the resolution. If you haven’t yet called your members of Congress, please do it now. And, yes, the president would need to sign this bill. I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, so I’ll just say we welcome that fight. Right now, passing this essential legislation is the main focus of our direct lobbying inside D.C. and our outside organizing alongside our allies in Team Internet — the volunteer-driven effort that has already put together more than 1,300 in-district meetings and local rallies.

Of course, legislation isn’t the only way to fix what the FCC did. On Jan 16, Free Press filed one of the very first lawsuits aimed at overturning the agency’s Net Neutrality repeal. We’ll be teaming up with experienced Supreme Court lawyers and our allies at New America’s Open Technology Institute and Public Knowledge as the litigation progresses, while coordinating our efforts with other challengers, including 22 state attorneys general led by New York’s Eric Schneiderman and internet companies like Mozilla.

Benton Content:

https://www.freepress.net/blog/2018/01/17/whats-next-net-neutrality-congress-and…

Source:

Free Press

Author:

Craig Aaron

Priority:

Medium

Send date:

Thu, 01/18/2018

Daily Digest:

Daily Digest 1/17/2018