In his speech marking the anniversary of the Capitol insurrection, President Joe Biden talked Thursday about a statue of Clio, the Greek muse of history, looking down over the door to the rotunda and recording the ransacking of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. With apologies to Clio, it was in fact the cameras of broadcast and cable and C-SPAN and surveillance cameras and the video streams from cellphones that captured the attack on the Capitol and the rule of law.

Just as the cable and broadcast networks and streaming services covered speeches marking the anniversary by the president and Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday.

The president, speaking from the Capitol's Statuary Hall, made the point about the nation being witness to that troubling history when he said “[Y]ou and I and the whole world saw with our own eyes” the truth of what happened that day, which he said was rioters rampaging and trying to rip the country apart.

Also: The Capitol Siege: Images That Linger

Taking the gloves off, Biden said former President Donald Trump had rallied the mob to attack, then sat in a private dining room off the Oval Office and watched it on television. Former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham said on CNN Thursday the then-president had watched, and rewatched, the footage — even as he was being asked to quell the violence of a crowd he had earlier urged to fight to have the election overturned. As Trump watched the TV, Biden said, he “did nothing for hours and hours” as police were assaulted and the Capitol besieged by an armed insurrection.

Earlier, Harris had said, “We all saw what our nation would look like if the forces who seek to dismantle our democracy are successful.”

It was journalists who chronicled the truth of that day and in doing so helped face down the violent mob by recording its ugly face for the world to see, and at some personal risk — rioters in the crowd trashed equipment and some talked about killing the journalists covering the insurrection.

Biden included reporters in talking about all who were “living with the trauma of that day.”

From the president’s speech about a stolen election that rallied a crowd to march to the Capitol, successfully breaching the building and disrupting the counting of electoral votes, reporters — who some in the crowd openly threatened to hunt down and kill one by one — kept reporting.

The president talked about a choice between living in the “light of truth” or the “shadow of lies.” Journalists have a critical role in shining that light, and a responsibility not to join, for ratings or political purposes, those throwing shade on that truth.

In a pro forma session that lasted only a few minutes but was carried by broadcast and cable networks, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called for a moment of silence in honor of the police officers who lost their lives following the attack.

According to CNN, the only Republican in the chamber for that moment of silence was Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), a member of the special committee investigating the insurrection, accompanied by her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney. C-SPAN's cameras, though controlled by the Congress, clearly showed the Republican side virtually empty, pretty much ensuring there would be silence from that side of the chamber during the moment of remembrance. ■

Former President Donald Trump lived by the sword of angry tweets and made-for-video rallies and statements, and if the House impeachment managers' case against the president is any indication, his reputation may die on that sword.

Tweets and videos from a host of media outlets, many of which had been branded enemies of the people by Trump, were used extensively last week to build the House impeachment managers’ case against Trump as the instigator of the Capitol insurrection through months of claims on social media and in videos — White House-produced and otherwise — of a stolen election and a Joe Biden victory that could only be the result of widespread fraud.

Throughout his presidency, Trump’s advisers had reportedly warned him that his avalanche of social media posts, early on identified as official statements from the president, were stepping on his message and distracting from his agenda, though arguably that agenda also included rallying his base against what he saw as a media out to get him in league with Democrats. But the consequences of his reliance on the media he reviles to connect with his base could prove more serious and longer-lasting.

The House impeachment managers’ argument was a highly emotional one, rooted deeply in the sobering and shocking videos and tweets, which played a prominent if not dominant role in the prosecution.

And while legal commentators pointed out that the audience was about 10 Republicans who would needed to be swayed if the president were to be convicted, the wider TV and online audience for the Senate trial, which was being covered wall-to-wall online and on cable news and heavily on broadcast, was also likely the millions of people the Democrats were looking to persuade of the unsuitability of Trump to high office.

Since conviction was unlikely from the outset, conveying the horror of the day — with Capitol police mauled and the mob calling for Vice President Mike Pence’s hanging and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s murder, while the President remained relatively silent — clearly also had the secondary goal of convicting Trump in the court of public opinion. That’s because the end game, as much as accountability, was ensuring the former president cannot be re-elected in 2024. 

In an age of 5G technological prowess, the so-called rural digital divide remains a vexing thorn in the side of policymakers. So much so, in fact, that it unites both sides of the aisle that more needs to be done to get all Americans online no matter where they live.

The most recent and prominent of these efforts is the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunities Fund (RDOF) proposal. Later this month the FCC will vote on the ten-year, $20 billion RDOF plan to get more broadband out to rural Americans. Its central feature employs a competitive reverse auction process, which in the past has brought many large and small companies with innovative networks and business models to the table to compete and deliver broadband to unserved Americans. In fact, in the previous highly successful CAF Phase II auction, the FCC used this auction design format to provide support to over 710,000 locations in 45 states, proving that competition by diverse companies throughout the auction is the most efficient way to provide faster broadband networks across the Nation.

Will the RDOF auction bring a broad pool of bidders together to best ensure the plan’s success?

It can if it closely adheres to its successful CAF II model.

How?

The CAF II model more inclusively enables an important group of small rural innovators – namely, Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) – to meaningfully participate in all of the bidding rounds, thereby maximizing limited taxpayer dollars, and providing a larger palette of nimble solutions, which can flexibly and cost-consciously scale to rural communities.

During the CAF Phase II auction, WISPs bid in all phases of the auction, from round one, beyond the clearing round 12, and through to the last round 18. WISPs’ active participation in the auction helped reduce the level of federal support needed to provide faster broadband to 45 states from $1.98 billion to $1.49 billion. As a result, many of America’s hardest to serve communities are now receiving robust and evolving broadband solutions where none existed before.

WISPs use “fixed wireless” architecture, which employs spectrum instead of wires, to deliver high-speed broadband service to more than 6 million, mainly rural Americans. They can bring broadband to customers at 15% of the cost of a fiber provider virtually overnight, even in the most challenging of geographies.

By the end of 2020, WISPs will have pumped approximately $4.4 billion directly into the economy, creating nearly a $10 billion indirect effect on the U.S. GDP. This output will keep growing. The WISP marketplace expands at about a 15% per-year clip – several times faster than the rest of the fixed broadband industry. It confirms WISPs are adept at quickly, cost-effectively and currently – not at some distant time in the future – meeting both the demands of rural consumers and the vital national policy objective of bringing faster broadband networks to all Americans no matter where they live.

The Commission, Congress and the Administration must be commended for their efforts to bridge the rural digital divide. RDOF shows a tremendous commitment to inject much needed vigor into the battle to eradicate the problem. That aside, the FCC could better guarantee success in this fight if it remained faithful to its proven CAF Phase II model and allowed WISPs and other entities to participate beyond the clearing round. This ensures that market forces enabled by a more inclusive pool of bidders determine RDOF’s auction outcome. Unfortunately, the RDOF draft order would only allow the fastest broadband speeds to continue past the clearing round.

Returning to a CAF Phase II-like auction promotes participation by small rural innovators such as WISPs, and helps the hardest to serve rural areas get the evolving and affordable solutions they need to thrive.

WISPs are a key part of achieving this, showing 6 million times over that they can bring new communities online and connected to our digital economy. They should be allowed meaningful access throughout the RDOF auction process, uniting rural America to the rest of the country via innovative yet taxpayer-friendly solutions, which meet the broadband needs of their local communities.

Waiting. That’s the name of the game for those anticipating the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s decision on the Federal Communications Commission's Restoring Internet Freedom order repealing Title II rules for broadband. 

The case was argued on Feb. 1 of this year, so the D.C. Circuit could hand down a ruling any day now. But regardless of whether the decision is uphold or overturn, Americans deserve action on net neutrality from Congress. Statutory permanence for internet openness is the only way to end the ongoing uncertainty shrouding the internet ecosystem due to ever-changing rules. As we await the D.C. Circuit’s decision, it’s worth recalling what’s at stake.

In 2015, the FCC ruled that broadband is a Title II telecommunications service, subject to the common-carrier rules developed for the predigital age of monopoly-controlled telephones. With this ruling, the FCC abandoned the previous 20 years of light-touch regulation of broadband first adopted during the Clinton administration. During those two decades of regulatory certainty, America experienced a golden age of broadband investment that made our communications network the envy of the world.

With the FCC’s 2015 ruling, investment in broadband networks declined for an understandable reason: Carriers simply did not know which of the FCC’s Title II authorities would be imposed upon them and when. Would rates be regulated? Would the FCC require that network elements be unbundled and made available to competitors below the broadband carriers’ costs?

The regulatory uncertainty created by the 2015 rule placed a severe damper on investment at the very time when mobile broadband carriers are preparing to deploy 5G networks, which will require unprecedented levels of investment and enable advances such as autonomous driving and Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity.

Recognizing the mistake of the 2015 order, in 2018 the FCC restored the status of broadband as a Title I information service subject to the light-touch regulation that had prevailed with bipartisan support from the first commercialization of the internet until 2015.

Further, the FCC made the right call to exercise preemption of conflicting state and local regulations. So, for that matter, did the FCC in 2015 when it included preemption in its order imposing monopoly-style telephone service regulation on the broadband internet. The internet doesn’t recognize state lines, and in a national digital economy, uniform national regulation is essential.

The D.C. Circuit is giving careful consideration to the question of whether the 2018 FCC order is valid. Whatever the outcome, the matter should not rest with the court’s decision. It’s essential that Congress put to rest the net neutrality debate, which has now raged since 2003. A simple formula for a statutory resolution would include the codification of net neutrality protections along the lines of the FCC’s 2010 Open Internet Order, which was endorsed by broadband providers and by companies that provide content at the internet edge. The statute would also designate broadband as a Title I information service in recognition of the regulatory construct that prevailed for all but two years of the past two decades. The regulatory certainty of that statutory permanence would open the door to the tens of billions of dollars of investment required to build our 5G future.

If Congress fails to act, we can anticipate a never-ending seesaw between Title I and Title II status for broadband with every change in administration.

Despite the passion of the net neutrality debate, I believe compromise is possible. Why? Many prominent Republicans have now accepted the need for the core protections of net neutrality (one Republican bill is modeled after former Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman’s net neutrality bill from 2010). And senior Democrats should accept information services status for broadband if the core net neutrality protections are embedded in statute.

Congressional action would put the issue behind us, obviate the need for further attention from the courts, and set the internet on course for another decade of growth. The stage would then be set for Congress to adopt other needed online protections for consumers, including a uniform requirement that all participants in the internet ecosystem — from edge providers to the ISPs that connect users to the network — protect the privacy of internet users.

Only Congress can, at last, bring an end to the longest running and most intense telecommunications debate of the 21 century.

Rick Boucher was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 28 years and was chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Communications and the Internet. He is honorary chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA) and a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of law firm Sidley Austin.

I am not saying that WRGT Dayton, Ohio, meteorologist Jamie Simpson should have gone off on Bachelorette fans for complaining on social media about the weather break-in to warn of tornadoes, but I can understand his frustration.

Not that I didn't have a moment or two myself of "enough already" over the weekend when I couldn't see Saturday's repeat of Jeopardy Jamie's (sorry Ken J.) Friday win as my own local meteorologist warned of storms not immediately in my area--perhaps with ATSC 3.0 there will be more targeted weather warnings. 

But, of course (I hope "of course"), I recognized that my frustration hardly trumped the life-saving info broadcasters provide somewhere every day whether fans of Bachelorette or Jeopardy like it or not. 

Ironically, broadcasters voluntarily put themselves in the line of FCC fire when they drop regular programming to cover weather emergencies. They are not required to provide that emergency info--beyond the general and vague "public interest" standard--but if they do so, they must meet FCC requirements for accessibility of that information, and do so on the fly, sometimes while station personnel themselves are facing threats to their own property and safety.

In the past, the FCC has fined or admonished (an official reprimand) broadcasters who dropped regular programming and advertising to cover emergencies but failed to provide sufficient visual representations of audible warnings, or vice versa.

I always thought that was a bit harsh. A warning maybe, accompanied by a recognition of the running, wall-to-wall, coverage in which the missteps occurred. 

Video-sharing website Vimeo is telling supporters that the FCC is planning to “repeal” net-neutrality rules and, if that happens, the internet will “start to resemble an old, rigid (vanilla) cable TV system, instead of the open (and ‘weird’) network that we know and love.”

The Federal Communications Commission has yet to announce exactly what it will do with the Tom Wheeler-era rules, but it is a pretty safe bet some of them are going and that Title II reclassification of ISPs will be rolled back, given the Republican majority’s distaste for Title II.

Vimeo's website is participating in the July 12 Internet Action Day to protest FCC chair Ajit Pai’s proposal to reclassify internet access, wired and wireless, and interconnections, as an information service not subject to Title II common-carrier regulations, as well as to eliminate the general conduct standard and reconsider whether the bright-line rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization are necessary.

Organizer Fight for the Future said more than 50,000 people, sites or organizations are participating in Internet Action Day. Vimeo is one of a host of edge providers participating in the protest — Amazon, Etsy, Mozilla and Netflix are as well — and it's marshaling its online video resources to make its case. 

"Participating" includes posting homepage messages, push notifications, videos, email campaigns and more, by some of the same groups behind the Internet Slowdown protest that helped defeat online piracy legislation (SOPA, PIPA) despite previous bipartisan Hill support.

For its part, Vimeo reached out to the producers who make its monthly “Staff Pick” videos of content that Vimeo staffers “really, really like” to create a Why We Need Net Neutrality video to say why they really, really like the Internet under Title II.

Initial comments on Pai's net-neutrality rule proposal are due July 14.

Popular Resistance, which protested then-Federal Communications Commission chair Tom Wheeler’s plan not to reclassify ISPs under Title II, are back at it with a new chair but the same complaint.

Some protestors stopped by Wheeler’s house last time around. Pai should expect some visitors, as well, in advance of the May 18 vote to launch his rollback of the Title II reclassification Wheeler eventually warmed to, and voted to impose.

Related: Pai Reads Mean Tweets

Popular Resistance has already launched its “Ajit-ation” campaign, according to the group, handing out flyers and door hangers in Pai’s Arlington, Va., neighborhood with his photo, captioned: “Have You Seen This Man.”

The group said it had even hung one on Pai’s door — it has also posted a photo online of what it said is the chairman’s house, with a warning to expect more visitors. It had planned a number of street protests there for this week.

Pai’s office had no comment at press time, but Wheeler talked with protestors at his house for a while before heading off to work, and when there was a brief musical protest at Pai’s first public meeting, he took it in good spirits and even sang along.

Another former FCC chair is also in the net-neutrality protest mix, but he will be the protestor rather than protestee. Michael Copps, a big fan of Title II, plans to address a rally outside FCC headquarters Thursday (May 18) in advance of the vote.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has channeled John Oliver in a new, self-mocking video where he reads some of the hateful tweets he has gotten since taking over the top job at the FCC, and particularly since signaling his plan for rolling back Title II reclassification of ISPs.

In the video, courtesy of the Independent Journalism Review, Pai even one-ups John Oliver's lampoon of his really big Reese's Peanut Butter mug (see photo) in the video's final frames.

It was not a big stretch for Pai, who has brought his humor to FCC meetings for years with song and cultural references peppering his public statements, and even singing along to a protest song offered up at his first public meeting.

Pai says in the video that he enjoys the public debate about the future of the Internet. The video certainly gives that impression as he jokingly reads the "mean tweets" and responds good naturedly, bobbling his own head when he is likened to a bobble-head doll, for example, and defusing with humor various racially charged tweets.

"Go back to Africa were you came one," he reads, answering "Do you even English, bro?" He follows that with: "Ajit Pai is another fascist who needs to be apprehend and to be put on trial for crimes against the people. The Guillotines are coming." His response: "Well, you're not going to catch me if I'm back in Africa, now are ya?"

One tweet asks why no one has pointed out how Pai looks like Theodore from The Chipmunks. Pai answers, with the vocal speeded up to mimic the ‘munks: "AT 78 rpm, I think you have a point (Editor's note: The voice actually sounds a little more like Marcel the Shell.)


John Oliver, on the May 14 episode of Last Week Tonight, pointed to some of the racist comments that had been filed at the FCC targeting Pai--he had asked his minions the week before to flood the docket with opposition to Pai's plan--and told his viewers not to file anything like that.

"If any of those came from anyone who watches this show, stop it," he said. "Writing racist things on the Internet is not how you win the net neutrality debate, it's how you win the presidency."

He encouraged them to continue to file comments, but wait until after the FCC's May 18 vote, since the commission is in the pre-meeting "sunshine" quiet period where they cannot be lobbied on items up for a vote. 

WASHINGTON — Last week's rollback of the FCC's privacy rules spurred legislative action in the Minnesota State Senate, while in the U.S. Senate, the Intelligence Committee launched hearings on Russia's interference with the 2016 presidential election. Meanwhile, the Commerce Department tapped AT&T to build and maintain the nation's first-responder network. Following are highlights from last week in D.C.

Minnesota Adopts Own Privacy Rules
The Minnesota State Senate had its own exclamation point for Congress’s move to roll back broadband privacy rules. In light of Congress’s approval of the Congressional Review Act, and the president’s expected signoff, the state Senate voted to adopt its own version of the regulations, according to the Twin Cities Pioneer Press.

Republicans had argued that state privacy laws would remain in effect even after the Federal Communications Commission’s rules were scrapped. Minnesota’s Senate took that cue and added its own.

An amendment to an economic development bill passed the Minnesota Senate with the help of one Republican vote. A similar amendment was added to the House bill, which must now be reconciled with the Senate bill.

The Minnesota amendment would prevent any ISP with a franchise agreement in the state from collecting personal information from customers “without express written approval from the customer” or from denying service if that approval was not given.

Those were two key elements of the FCC regulations that were rolled back. (Pictured: The Minnesota State Capitol)

9/11 Overhaul
More than 15 years after 9/11, the Commerce Department last week announced that AT&T had been awarded the 25-year, $46.5 billion contract to build out and maintain FirstNet, the interoperable broadband first responder network. AT&T will invest $40 billion, and in exchange will get access to the network during nonemergencies.

The network is being built using 20 MHz of spectrum set aside from the FCC’s 700-MHz auction and the government’s $6.5 billion contribution to the cause came from the FCC’s AWS-3 wireless spectrum auction.

Smaller and rural broadband providers were looking to get in on some of that action. “NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association and its members, network operators in rural areas of the country with substantial assets and infrastructure, are eager to partner with AT&T to leverage this infrastructure and to promote success in the quest to build, operate and maintain a ubiquitous public safety network throughout the country,” said association CEO Shirley Bloomfield after the announcement. Read more here.

Fake News, for Real
Broadband was much on the minds of the Senate Intelligence Committee as it launched a series of hearings on Russia’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. That included both cybersecurity issues and the proliferation of fake news that has been amplified by mainstream, and nonmainstream, media chasing the latest story.

Committee ranking member Mark Warner (D-Va.) cited the media “echo” chamber as partly to blame.

“The Russians employed thousands of Internet trolls and botnets to push out disinformation and fake news at high volume, focusing this material onto your Twitter and Facebook feeds and flooding our social media with misinformation,” Warner said. “[T]his fake news and disinformation was then hyped by the American media echo chamber and our own social media networks to reach — and potentially influence — millions of Americans.” Read more here.

C-SPAN, the indispensable public service network brought to you by your local cable/Internet/voice company, is providing wall-to-gilded wall coverage of the comings and goings at Trump Tower, currently the really tall seat of power (a "high chair"?) for the President-elect.

The public service cable/broadcast/'Net net is providing ongoing online access on its home page to the network pool feed camera trained on the polished golden elevator doors in the lobby of Trump's New York digs (or wheeled around to catch an exiting bigwig for an interview).

The video stakeout is providing something between a worm's- and a bird's-eye-view of the high and mighty want-to-be's (those looking to get in on the ground floor of a new Administration, as it were) as they pay court and weigh in on transition team picks for top posts.

And then there are the regular folks with their shopping bags and tablets and briefcases, the mics capturing snatches of conversation amidst the general din  echoing off the polished metal and marble (?).

According to C-SPAN spokesfolks, in the nine days the human traffic cam has been available on the home page--it was in day 10 Friday (Dec. 2)--65 hours, 57 minutes and 15 seconds of lobby activity had been streamed via #elevatorcam.

Among those captured by the cam, and by C-SPAN's Howard Mortman in some off-the-screen shots, include former VP Dan Quayle, CNN's Wolf Blitzer and a singing cowboy. We are also told Larry King and Santa have made appearances in the lobby. If Trump has his way West Virginia miners will be supplying Santa with sufficient coal to put in the stockings of recalcitrant legislators on both sides.

At press time, the journalists behind the pool camera were getting a lot of questions from passersby about why the camera was there and whether it was because President-elect Donald Trump might soon appear. He didn't. "I would be so excited if I saw somebody," one woman said. "Maybe y'all will be good enough," she drawled to the journalists. "I can take a picture of you guys."

A second woman did take their pictures (see picture)--followed not long after by a third, and then others--stopping briefly to turn their camera phones and cameras on the pool camera in what seemed a fitting comment on the absurdity of the political moment.

Absurd, but oddly addicting. I found myself strangely drawn back to the feed, as I am to yard sales, afraid I would miss out on something—a copy of the Declaration of Independence tucked behind a clown painting in a five-dollar frame in the case of yard sales; a Trump sighting in the case of what could become salted peanuts for the passing political parade: #elevatorcam.

Thanks to this job I have been served milk and cookies by June Cleaver (Barbara Billingsley), gotten a hug from (Mr.) Fred Rogers, and toured a Star Trek exhibit with James Doohan --"Jim Beam me up, Scotty." And then there was the day I wasn't Arnold Palmer. 

A couple of years ago I talked with Mr. Palmer (who, sadly, died Sunday at age 87) on a Golf Channel press call -- he asked me to call him "Arnold" (or at least that is how I remember it, and I am sticking to that story). As the Washington reporter covering regulation, Congress and the courts, I had no business on the call, really. I just wanted to talk with Arnold Palmer.

Back in the 1960's, mostly following my father's lead, I was one of those people who rooted against Jack Nicklaus as pretender to "The King's" throne. Eventually I rooted for Jack against his challengers, but in the early days I always wanted Arnie to win every tournament.

So, I queued up in the press call and I got to ask Arnold who would be in his all-time foursome if he could play with anyone. I remember President Eisenhower was one of them, but I don't remember the others -- it is on a transcript somewhere, so it is not lost to history -- because while he was answering I was too busy thinking to myself: "I'm talking to Arnold Palmer."

But that was not my first link to the "King" of the links. That was the day I wasn't Arnold Palmer.

The channel was only a couple of years old, I think, when I got a phone call from someone there late on a Friday afternoon asking if I would like to play in a tournament they were sponsoring the following Sunday out in California -- I think it was at an NCTA convention -- in a foursome with Joe Gibbs.

I was planning on going anyway, though I would now have to play hooky from press room set-up. But as a lifelong Washington football fan, I jumped at the chance. (I also got to "play football" against Sonny Jurgensen and Billy Kilmer early in my career, but that's another story.)

When I got to the course for the tournament, I was introduced to Joe Gibbs, a great guy and co-founder of The Golf Channel, but not the football coach I had, in my ignorance, been expecting to play with. My face might have fallen a bit, though I hope not.

Joe and I walked to the tee to meet up with the other members of our foursome -- a couple of captains of industry. When they saw me, their faces looked as though they had taken a sip of what they thought was going to be an Arnold Palmer and got milk instead.

At the turn I ducked into the clubhouse and asked the Golf Channel representative who had offered me the spot why my fellow players had seemed so disappointed when they saw me coming, particularly since they hadn't seen me play -- I love golf, but it doesn't love me. It was only then that she, rather sheepishly, revealed that the reason for my last-minute invite was because the original fourth player couldn't make it: Golf Channel co-founder Arnold Palmer.

I suddenly felt that my outing partners had shown great restraint in not weeping uncontrollably at the sight of me.

I have some lemonade in the fridge. I think I will go add a spoonful of iced tea mix to a glass and raise a toast (in fact, I just did) to one of the great men, and gentlemen, in the history of professional sports.

I am probably not breaking news here, but I rely on C-SPAN for a lot of my access to the workings — or more often dysfunctionings — of Congress.

That means I rely on cable operators around the country who fund the channel — make that channels and website.

It is, in a word, indispensable.

It is also often taken for granted, for which C-SPAN has only itself to blame. Because it is so pervasive and so professionally run, the access it provides to our sausage-makers has come to feel like an entitlement, or at least a constitutional right.

Last week, Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.) introduced what he called a “simple change” to House rules that would ensure the next congressional sit-in does not have to rely on Periscope or Facebook video streams to get out.

Actually, many were still relying on C-SPAN during the House sit-in last month, when the cameras were turned off, but social media lit up and the network was there to tap into it.

Bera said he figured most viewers assumed C-SPAN was part of the “public domain,” adding: “We ought to give control of those cameras back over to the media and the public, and have independent control.”

C-SPAN has long sought to be able to use its own cameras rather than have to take the feed from House cameras controlled by the Speaker. I agree, and this seems a good time for Congress to consider it.

Members of Congress will be going off to campaign for re-election in a week or so. When they get back, perhaps they can make that a parting gift to the nation.

But also noteworthy was Bera’s comment that most people probably thought C-SPAN was the public’s domain. Of course, that is just what it has become, thanks to the investment of the cable industry.

WASHINGTON -- ABC's John Parkinson, chair of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association, Wednesday called on presumptive GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump to restore immediately the press credentials his campaign pulled from The Washington Post over a headline and story the candidate took issue with.

Parkinson was speaking at RTCA's annual congressional correspondents dinner here, or as keynote speaker Ohio Governor John Kasich called it after three of the night's four awards went to ABC newsers: "The ABC Awards show."

"Talk about fair and balanced," Kasich quipped.

Taking home the Joan Barone Award for D.C.-based national affairs, public policy coverage was ABC News chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl. ABC News’s senior operations producer Peter Doherty was given the Jerry Thompson Memorial award for efforts "above and beyond" in service of the public's right to know, and ABC's retiring Dennis Dunlavey, who has directed D.C. coverage, received the Career Achievement Award.

Rounding out the awards, and the only non-ABC winner, was BBC International correspondent Ian Pannell, who got the David Bloom Award for excellence in enterprise reporting.

Kasich joked about the credential issue.

"I've picked up the angst here about press credentials," he said. "You mention that word, and everybody gets upset. In my campaign, we paid people to take press credentials so somebody would show up every once in a while."

The presidential campaign was a constant subtext of the RTCA event -- the group has officially asked the Trump campaign to restore the Post's credentials -- from the applause for Parkinson's call for immediate action, to Kasich's reference, to Dunlavey's acceptance speech.

Pointing out that he was already "mostly" retired, Dunlavey said he would have to rely on the journalists in the audience, as Americans are doing, to "make sense of this peculiar election campaign, and to make sense of it all."

"It is going to be a long campaign, and we are counting on you not to grow weary of separating facts from fiction, not to become immune to outrage," Dunlavey said. "It is going to be a long five-and-half months. Don't get tired of holding people accountable who feel they don't need to be held accountable... When does objectivity require a little less equivalence and a little more truth?"

Citing the musical Hamilton, he ended his remarks with "History has its eyes on you."

OK, I've got to weigh in once again on the one-man political circus that is Donald Trump.

His petty personal attacks, most recently aimed at journalists with the temerity to ask tough questions, have gotten very old.

He called one reporter a “sleaze” after the journalist pressed the candidate on just how much money he raised for veterans with an event he quickly put together after refusing to participate in a Fox News Channel debate. But Trump has found multiple media targets to insult and signaled White House press conferences would be equally bare-knuckle bouts of personal attacks if he were being quizzed by “lying” reporters.

Trump is an equal opportunity offender, which is why many in his own party are so troubled by his candidacy.

His defenders, meanwhile, find new ways of positioning his thin-skinned petulance and "You are, but what am I?" rebuttal technique as a refreshing anti-Washington tone.

But the shrugging “That’s Trump” defense of his often embarrassing and mean-spirited bluster doesn’t wash either. I don't know what is in his heart, but what comes out of his mouth reminds me why I have such problems with his candidacy, as well as those who appear willing to follow him down such and ugly path.

There are ways to point out the flaws in the current system without trashing people right and left, but the GOP candidate has yet to discover them.

This election has gone beyond politics to a referendum on what kind of people we want to be, not just who we want to be led by.

While I am on the subject of potential and actual future presidents and press attacks, the president-elect of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duteret, reportedly said recently, "Just because you're a journalist, you are not exempted from assassination if you're a son of a bitch."

The Committee to Protect Journalists, SOBs and otherwise, was not amused and strongly condemned the statement.

"President-Elect Rodrigo Duterte's shocking remarks apparently excusing extrajudicial killings threaten to make the Philippines into a killing field for journalists," said Shawn Crispin, CPJ's senior Southeast Asia representative, following various reports on the statement. "We strongly urge him to retract his comments and to signal that he intends to protect, not target, the press."

So do I and, come to think of it, I would relay that last bit of advice to candidate Trump as well. It would be nice to think that someone who wants to be President would have the First Amendment's back.

WASHINGTON — The American Cable Association and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association are looking to save some trees — and themselves some green in the process.

In a request for declaratory ruling from the Media Bureau last week, the associations asked the FCC to declare that emails to subscribers for whom operators have a working email address can replace the “hundreds of millions of pages of paper” it requires annually to fulfill the FCC requirement for routine customer notifications oth at the time of a service’s purchase and at any other time upon request.

Those would include individual notices of how much a customer pays in rental fees for leased set-tops, prices and programming tier options, installation and maintenance policies, and more.

Most operators still provide a snail mail hard copy of information that MVPDs say “few subscribers read and virtually none retain.”

Making the requirement electronic, the organizations said, would help the environment, while modernizing the rules and speeding notices and updates. They also argued it would allow their members “greater flexibility to match the electronic operations of their online and other competitors.”

As precedent for the move away from paper, they pointed to the FCC’s decision to require TV stations and MVPD public files to be made available online in an FCC database rather than mandating them to keep hard copies at their main studios.

The Sierra Club has estimated that one tree translates to 10,000-20,000 pages, so let’s just say that if the trees could talk, after advising Clint Eastwood to take singing lessons, thousands of them would be saying thank you to the FCC and cable operators.

Click here to uncover the Clint Eastwood movie reference.

Adonis Hoffman, Alfred Liggins and Michael Powell deserve a collective nod for agreeing to talk honestly and at length with Multichannel News about the state of diversity in the media and elsewhere.

The three executives — Hoffman, a former Federal Communications Commission staffer now chairing Business in the Public Interest; Liggins, CEO of Radio One, which owns cable-TV network TV One; and Powell, a former FCC chairman and now CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association — are the subjects of this week’s Q&A cover story, with more to come in next week’s issue.

The conversation was an important one to have. There should be more frequent and serious attempts to define and encourage diversity in the workplace.

As neither an African-American nor a captain of industry (or policy), I went into the talk with a certain lack of familiarity on the topic. But that was part of the reason for doing it. As much as I wanted others to hear the participants’ stories and observations, I wanted to get schooled myself.

I can’t know what it’s like to walk even a few steps in their shoes, but one takeaway was that racial justice still requires beating on some closed doors that should have already been opened. Another is that success is both a sword and shield: A sword because, increasingly in business, success is dictated by the color green above all else; a shield, because the more successful you are, the harder it is to deny opportunities to others.

Speaking of career advancement advice he received from Judge Harry Edwards, one of the first black appellate judges in the U.S., Michael Powell says in the next installment of the Q&A that excellence is the best response to racism: “Make sure you beat people so significantly that there is no explanation for you not rising other than race.”

Diversity is just as good for business as it is for building that post-racial shining society on the hill, particularly if we are aiming ahead of the target.

Society is becoming increasingly diverse and, unless Donald Trump succeeds in replacing Lady Liberty’s torch with a stop sign, it will become only more so.

No one is saying to hire the wrong person for the job. What they, and we, should be saying is, take affirmative steps to include diverse voices in the conversation and put diverse faces in front of the camera, behind the camera and in the C-suites and boardrooms.

That includes using government relationships, as well as its levers, to bring minorities into conversations they were systematically excluded from when licenses were handed out and big media companies were built.

It is ultimately equality of opportunity that will build a more inclusive society, that and recognizing that attempts to stereotype people, any people, are borne of ignorance and fear and are ultimately doomed to the dustbin — and rogues’ gallery — of history.

Hot-button media issues like drones and online privacy have made their way onto the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CFCC) list of worst toys.

In response to the Toy Industry Association of America’s annual Toy of the Year Awards, CFCC came up with its own awards, dubbed TOADY (Toys Oppressive And Destructive to Young children).

This year's TOADY nominees include the Sky Viper Video Drone, which CFCC said belies its target of kids 12-plus by advertising in TV shows like The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, which "ensures that even very young children will nag their parents for their own flying spy cam" with which to conduct "military-like surveillance."

It also takes issue with the Hello Barbie.

"Prepare your daughter for a lifetime of surveillance with Hello Barbie, the doll that records children's private conversations and transmits them to cloud servers, where they are analyzed by algorithms and listened to by strangers," the group said.

CFCC two weeks ago launched "Hell No Barbie," a public education campaign targeting the Wi-Fi enabled talking doll, saying surveillance has no place in kids' toys and could be susceptible to data breaches.

Also nominated were the Tube Heroes collector packs celebrating "the brave young men and women who upload videos of themselves playing video games to YouTube."

The "winner" will be announced Dec. 7. Representatives of the toy companies had not responded to requests for comment at press time.

Almost 50 million people have watched the first two presidential candidate debates. That’s not exactly a Super Bowl-like number, but in a world of fractured media, getting that many people to watch politicians discussing actual issues that could affect us all for generations — OK, as well as what a brilliant and successful businessman one of them professes to be — is impressive.

Say what you will about Donald Trump, he has made politics into a compelling spectator sport.

I have been a debate junkie since college, when I watched President Ford and Jimmy Carter live from the cheap seats in William & Mary Hall, but the “what will they say next” nature of this political season has extended the audience beyond political junkies.

That’s why I am rooting for the Democratic National Committee to add some more candidate debates to the schedule.

Last week, when pressed by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Hillary Clinton said the decision was not hers to make but that she would be willing to expand the lineup. Given the ratings and ad-sales potential for debates — CNN expanded its GOP main event debate to three hours last week — civic-mindedness would also be good business.

The ball, as CNN pointed out, is in the DNC’s court. Some have suggested the party is limiting the debates to favor Clinton. Not limiting them favors the rest of us, and would put that criticism to rest.

What I would also like to see is similar TV-network (and viewer) interest in a couple of candidate forums at Drake University. Those are the “Brown and Black” forums that will give candidates of both parties a chance to talk specifically about minority issues.

A Drake spokesperson had no comment on what the TV-related plans for those are, but given the rhetoric around immigration and the current state of race relations in this country, it is not debatable that the candidates should show up and that it should be as widely available as possible.

The April 30 House Communications Subcommittee hearing gave Republicans a chance to grill FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, continuing to follow through on a pledge of muscular oversight of communications issues. It also gave Wheeler a chance to put some things on the record.

1. Wheeler promised that when the personally identifiable information (PII) has been scrubbed, the FCC will turn over to Congress all internal and external documents related to its decision to close two-thirds of its filed offices. Republicans, including ones with offices closing in their districts, expressed concern about the FCC's ability to monitor interference and tower issues.

2. Wheeler pledged that closing the field offices will not affect the FCC's 99% response rate on interference complaints related to public safety.

3. Wheeler said that Congress should get some process reform recommendations from his newly formed working group by the time they return from their August recess.

4. Wheeler said the current FCC rules permit a designated entity to bid on spectrum, then lease 100% of it to a nationwide carrier. But he pointed out that the rules that allow that are being reviewed (He has said slick lawyers should not be able to game the system).

5. Wheeler said that the nearly 8,000 cases the enforcement bureau had closed last year were mostly indecency complaints he had worked with FCC commissioner Michael O'Rielly to resolve, helping clear the way for TV station license renewals.

The Federal Communications Commission is getting in the spirit of the August ALS research-funding ice capades that have taken over YouTube, perhaps as a relief from the serious, globe-unhinging events here and abroad.

At least four of the FCC's five commissioners have taken the ALS ice-bucket challenge, according to YouTube videos documenting the events, and there is word former FCC chairs have been putting themselves on ice, or at least under it, as well.

The challenge to the commissioners came from former FCC commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, now head of CTIA, who took the challenge while visiting AT&T in Atlanta.

Jessica Rosenworcel took one for the team late Thursday, donating and challenging three others to do the same.

Originally, the deal with the challenge was to either dump water on your head or donate, but that left people wondering if the drenching was in lieu of donations, which would be the wrong signal to send. Now it appears to have morphed into doing both.

Rosenworcel challenged former FCC chairman Reed Hundt, skier Lindsey Vaughn (her favorite Olympian) and Big Bird.

FCC commissioner Ajit Pai (pictured) dumped the bucket on himself over the weekend, saying it was in part in memory of an aunt who had died of the disease, and challenged another former chairman, Julius Genachowski, former National Football League tight end Tony Gonzalez (he wore the ex-player’s Kansas City Chiefs jersey in the video) and "the judge in the highest court in the land, Judge Judy."

Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said that since he believed in private charities -- perhaps a bit moreso than government handouts -- he would be glad to both donate and take the challenge.

Hill telecom staffers called out by O'Rielly also took buckets for charity.

FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn on Wednesday (Aug. 20) added her name and wet head to the roll of commissioners who have taken the ice bucket challenge to raise money for ALS, as this latestYouTube video attests.

That leaves only the chairman, Tom Wheeler, who is currently out of town.

Clyburn challenged five others to follow suit: Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), chair of the House Communications Subcommittee; Condoleeza Rice; her father, Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.); former FCC commissioner Rob McDowell; and former chairman Michael Powell.

FCC chairman Tom Wheeler is out of town, so his bucket plans were unavailable.

Late last week, Genachowski emailed to say his family had beaten Pai to the punch -- or ice dump, as it were -- "Happy to have been challenged by Ajit Pai," he said. "My 22-year-old son had already beaten him to it, challenging me over the weekend! And my 10-year-old daughter did the ice-bucket honors on Monday," he said, adding that he had also contributed. Genachowski said he has no video of the event, just a photo only being shared with family.

Hundt also checked in to say he would be taking Rosenworcel up on the challenge last week, and would supply a video when it became available. He took issue with the lack of evidence on the Genachowski dunking. "I demand video proof of a thorough dunking," Hundt said.

At deadline, a National Cable & Telecommunications Association spokesperson said Powell would also be taking the challenge, complete with video.

The FCC celebrated its 80th birthday June 19 with a reunion of former chairs and commissioners, hosted by the current chair, Tom Wheeler.

It was described by one attendee as "mostly old friends talking," as well as snacking (pita, hummus, chips, shrimp), though there were speeches by Wheeler and former chairs Mignon Clyburn, Michael Copps, Michael Powell, Reed Hundt and Dick Wiley.

In addition to all the current commissioners, former commissioners on hand included Robert McDowell, Jonathan Adelstein, Rachelle Chong, Harold Furchtgott-Roth, Patricia Diaz Dennis and Andrew Barrett, plus former chiefs of staff—Jerry Fritz, Eddie Lazarus. Former chairs Kevin Martin, Julius Genachowski and Bill Kennard were among the recent chairs who did not make it to the event.

There was also a slide show culled from the commissioners and chairs featuring photos from commissions past.

Wiley joked that he had been around when the 1934 Act creating the FCC was signed by Franklin Roosevelt, and Powell pointed out that while he was appointed by another President to an important position that had a great effect on the economy and people's lives and what he would be remembered for was examining Janet Jackson's breasts (a reference to the Super Bowl reveal).

The press was not invited to partake of the birthday cake or monitor those conversations. But word is it was chocolate and boasted a Happy 80th Anniversary FCC (rather than "birthday") message.

Watergate was a boon to journalism schools everywhere, prompting a generation of kids to want to be the next Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein, or in some cases Bob Redford and Dustin Hoffman.

But MAD Magazine had already done the spadework on the burgeoning field of investigative journalists by getting them while still in knee pants, as it were,  and encouraging them to question authority, particularly how the government and Madison Avenue were trying to sell them--everything from cigarettes (see picture) and booze to candidates and the Vietnam war.

MAD and TV grew up together. OK, TV grew up. Some of the wickedest parodies of TV shows could be found in its pages, and its savaging of cigarette ads was a public service and an important counterpoint to the pretty girls and hunky cowboys meant to entice a new generation of smokers.

Al Feldstein, editor of MAD during its rise from a comic book to an influential humor magazine, died last week. He was the editor when I began amassing my collection of the magazines, which I have to this day and guard jealously even though I mave most of them in a DVD collection that even lets me electronically fold the fold-in on the back page (perhaps the single most important advance of the digital age).

MAD has always reveled in subversion, including subverting the subversives. It was a cultural revolutionary force armed with seltzer bottles and wickedly accurate pens.

Having been brought up on the magazine, I did my own reveling when I was able to publish--on the B&C editorial page, no less--a retrans-related parody of Dr. Seuss' Hop on Pop entitled Fox on Cox. Then there was my send-up editorial of the Tennessee TV station account execs who sold advertisers into their newscasts with promises of puff stories. That one was "Pardon Me, Boss, I Sold the Chattanooga News Crew," to the tune of "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" (OK, I'm old, but it beats the alternative unless the alternative is young).

I digress.

MAD was a big influence on my view of the world. Feldstein, publisher William Gaines, abetted by Mort Drucker,  Al Jaffee, Dave Berg, Jack Davis (who once drew a caricature of my father that remains a prized possession), Don Martin, Larry Siegel, Antonio Prohias and the “usual gang of idiots”--or as I like to call them, the original MAD Men, were all professors in the correspondence school of "don't buy everything adults are selling."

That advice proved just as valuable when the MAD kids grew up and started filling the ranks of print and broadcast journalism.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler took a break from the regulatory parry and thrust with communications stakeholders to be a "cakeholder."

He visited the offices of C-SPAN on Capitol Hill Wednesday (March 19) along with members of his staff to mark C-SPAN's 35th birthday as the home of House hearings.

C-SPAN has been giving FCC chairs tours of its offices for several years now, but according to C-SPAN VP and general counsel Bruce Collins, the chairman did not have a block of time sufficent for the tour, so they made it a lunch with senior staffers and impromptu birthday celebration instead, complete with a cake that Wheeler held for photos and then tasted.

Collins said that Wheeler brought along a number of staffers, and would have brought more except for some last minute bow-outs. "We were pleased that the chairman thought enough of the invitation that he wanted the whole staff to come," Collins said.

Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert took aim at the D.C. court's network neutrality ruling on his show Thursday night (Jan. 23), a decision he joked created "the new paradigm of holding content hostage," and which he cited as being reported by the Internet's "frenemy," television.

The bit included urging viewers to rise up against the cable companies, but his rallying cry was cut short when the picture broke up and displayed one of those annoying buffer icons as though the stream were being degraded online. After that, his tune changed to one of fawning praise for cable.

That was followed by an interview with "The Master Switch" author and Columbia law professor Tim Wu, taking claim for coming up with the term "network neutrality" and saying cable and phone companies want to impose a toll on the Internet to reach their customers. "The cable and phone companies position is 'we would like more money,'" he said. "And last time I checked I think they have enough money."

Colbert said the issue for ISP's was not money but, instead, free speech: "They want to be free to charge you for speech." He even took a gentle swipe at two large edge providers/search engines complaining about the potential new power of ISP's  to charge them for access. "

To check out the bit, go to http://www.colbertnation.com/.