Welcome to the May edition of the Free Press Update, our monthly newsletter. It was another busy month around here and we have a lot to cover — let’s dig in:

President Biden Nominates Anna Gomez to Fill the FCC's Fifth Seat

Big news: President Biden nominated Anna Gomez — a State Department senior technology adviser, former FCC and National Telecommunications and Information Administration official, and corporate attorney — to fill the fifth and final seat at the Federal Communications Commission. The president also renominated Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, who is nearing the end of his term.

The FCC has remained in an unprecedented 2–2 deadlock since January 2021 as deep-pocketed phone, cable and broadcast companies have worked to hamstring the agency that oversees their businesses. And everyday consumers have paid the price, including working families trying to pay their rising monthly internet bills and Black, Indigenous, Latinx and rural communities that the biggest telecom companies and broadcast conglomerates have long neglected.

In the coming weeks, we’ll have updates on our strategy to make these confirmations happen ASAP. You can read our press release for more background on Anna Gomez here.

How Lawmakers and Regulators Are Helping Sinclair Destroy Local News

Two recent bills that are supposedly designed to “save local news” would do anything but.

Both the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA) and the federal Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) would do little to give communities the news and information they need. Instead, these bills would allow news publishers — including mammoth broadcast companies — to extract payments from large social-media enterprises like Alphabet and Meta in exchange for linking to their content. This would apply to any content regardless of its accuracy or news value.

One of the bigger beneficiaries of California’s CJPA and the U.S. Senate’s JCPA is Sinclair, a media conglomerate that seems determined to get rid of local news and replace it with right-wing spin produced at a “National Desk” far removed from the communities this broadcast company is legally obligated to serve. You can read more on the Free Press blog here, and then take action to tell your senators to stop the JCPA.

CNN's Trump Trainwreck and the Mainstreaming of Authoritarians

The pageantry of lies that passed for a town hall earlier this month was yet another low point in CNN’s coverage of Donald Trump.

To absolutely no one’s surprise, the former president used the media attention to paint an alternative view of recent U.S. history — one in which he features not as the twice-impeached, criminally indicted sexual abuser who lost the last presidential election, but as a decisive and winning strongman, the only person with the power and charisma to make America great again.

CNN has faced a storm of criticism for its decision to give Trump a primetime slot, and deservedly so. But the network’s choices are symptoms of a larger problem. The commercial U.S. media system needs to undergo deep reckoning for its role in accommodating the rise of camera-friendly authoritarians. Read the full recap and analysis on the Free Press blog from Timothy Karr, our senior director of strategy and communications.

A View From the Field

Check out the latest updates from the field as Free Press and Free Press Action staffers work alongside our amazing allies and activists to create a more just and equitable media system. Below are just a few snippets from our monthly View from the Field blog — you can read the entire post here!

• Senior Counsel and Director of Digital Justice and Civil Rights Nora Benavidez spoke at a congressional briefing about platform transparency and data privacy. Mozilla and the Center for Democracy & Technology hosted the event, where Rep. Lori Trahan (D–Massachusetts) served as the keynote speaker. CNN technology reporter Brian Fung joined Nora and other experts during the panel discussion.
• Nora debated UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh about hate speech and the First Amendment. The Federalist Society hosted this event, which was held at the Emory University School of Law.
• Vice President of Cultural Strategy Collette Watson, who also serves as the Media 2070 project director, attended the Skoll World Forum in Oxford, England, where she delivered a presentation on the fight for media reparations. Other speakers included filmmaker Ava DuVernay, former Vice President Al Gore and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa.
• News Voices: Philadelphia Project Manager Tauhid Chappell and News Voices: Philadelphia Program Manager Cassie Owens led three virtual community workshops on mental health and harm reduction. These workshops grew out of the knowledge that coverage of crime and public safety can stigmatize, misrepresent and traumatize communities. The workshops brought together organizers and therapists to discuss what types of care and programming would best serve Philadelphia residents who have suffered the impacts of problematic and outright racist media coverage.

Other Free Press Updates

Earlier this month, a global coalition of digital-justice and human-rights leaders called on the news media and policymakers to tap the guidance of the communities most negatively impacted by artificial intelligence. A letter from 16 female and nonbinary experts, including many from the Global South, critiques the media for its heavy reliance on wealthy white men from North America and Western Europe to explain the harms posed by the unchecked proliferation of AI. Signers of the letter, available here, include Free Press Co-CEO Jessica J. González.

The Free Press-led Stop Toxic Twitter coalition is ramping up pressure on companies to suspend their advertising on Twitter as Elon Musk continues to embrace right-wing extremism, allowing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to use the social network as a megaphone for his lies and authoritarian views. Despite previously stating that Twitter “must be politically neutral” and “humanity's public square,” Musk has rolled back safeguards against harassment and hate speech and reinstated and amplified thousands of dangerous figures who have incited violence. Read the full coalition press release here.

Thank you for reading! The info here represents only a small fraction of what Free Press and Free Press Action are doing every day to fight for your rights to connect and communicate. Will you donate today to power our work forward?

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Photo credit of Donald Trump: Original photo by Flickr user Gage Skidmore