from the this-is-what-corruption-looks-like dept
We’ve defined how telecom and media giants have pulled out all of the stops attempting to dam Gigi Sohn from being seated on the FCC. That has concerned a sleazy smear campaign, seeded within the press by non-profits linked to firms like Information Company, AT&T, and Comcast, falsely accusing Sohn of being a radical extremist who hates Hispanics, rural Americans, cops, puppies, and freedom.
With Sohn freshly re-nominated by the Biden administration, a brand new weird smear marketing campaign popped up in press shops favorable to {industry}. It started yesterday with this piece within the Day by day Mail by Jen Smith (which I gained’t hyperlink to) which accuses Sohn of getting hyperlinks to a purportedly scandalous nonprofit and a (gasp) dominatrix:
The nonprofit in query is the extensively revered Digital Frontier Basis. The assault makes an attempt to frighten rubes by making the EFF’s extensively well-regarded policy advocacy on SESTA/FOSTA sound sleazy and scary. The EFF after all opposed SESTA/FOSTA as a result of the regulation was an unconstitutional mess that harmed free speech and made intercourse employees and victims of human trafficking dramatically less safe.
Sohn joined the EFF’s board in 2018, so there’s no precise information right here. The one aim of the report by the Day by day Mail’s Jen Smith is to affiliate Sohn’s identify in headlines with one thing scandalous. It’s gross, it’s homophobic, and it’s fairly typical of the assaults Sohn has confronted for the higher a part of the final yr as the primary brazenly LGBTQ fee nominee in historical past.
The story was concurrently run over at Fox Information, which used a barely much less feral headline however nonetheless tried to falsely recommend Sohn opposes combating human trafficking:
The aim of those assaults is to maintain the FCC and not using a voting majority essential to do something widespread with shoppers, like holding telecom monopolies accountable, restoring internet neutrality guidelines, restoring the FCC’s gutted shopper safety authority, or bringing again media consolidation restrictions. Its function can also be to scare Senators on the fence away from voting to substantiate Sohn.
That is how this recreation often works. Some seedy proper wing K Street public affairs firm employed by telecom or media (often AT&T, Comcast, or Information Company) will strategy industry-friendly journalists asking them in the event that they’d like a “scoop.” Mentioned non-scoop is then run unquestioningly by stated journalists, who wind up appearing extra like propagandist marionettes than something resembling a reporter.
Then in a couple of months or weeks, when Sohn faces down a brand new affirmation listening to, you’ll see Republican Senators cite these stories verbatim as proof Sohn shouldn’t be seated. It’s all a really dumb recreation designed to offer the phantasm that these are real issues based mostly on real journalism, when the entire thing is only a massive efficiency being orchestrated by some dodgy public affairs agency.
The whole thing of the GOP opposes Sohn as a result of that’s what they’ve been instructed to do by telecom and media giants if they need marketing campaign contributions. Mentioned giants have additionally focused Democratic Senators Mark Kelly of Arizona, Catherine Cortez Mastro of Nevada and Joe Manchin of West Virginia to stop Sohn from getting the fundamental Senate majority wanted to maneuver her nomination ahead.
Recall that Trump’s FCC nominee, Nathan Simington, was named and confirmed to the FCC in beneath 30 days regardless of having nearly no telecom expertise. In distinction Sohn, a vastly widespread reformer with expertise each out and in of presidency, is headed effectively into her second yr of contentious hearings.
It’s nonetheless very doubtless Sohn will get confirmed, barring some epic and corrupt stupidity on the a part of Democrats (an ever-present chance). Telecom and media giants simply need the method to take so long as humanly attainable, so by the point she’s seated the FCC will solely have sufficient time to deal with a handful of points earlier than the subsequent Presidential election dangers undoing all of it.
It’s pretty telling that there’s so little in Sohn’s file to really criticize that {industry} waterboys have been pressured to resort to attempting to make a scandal out of Sohn’s membership of a extensively revered tech coverage group. Nonetheless, it’s one other instance of how grotesquely corrupt the U.S. is, how precise reformers are held to a comically greater customary than anybody else, how our press is basically damaged, and why, as they are saying, we will’t have good issues.
Filed Below: broadband, fcc, fosta, gigi sohn, human trafficking, lobbying, monopolies, net neutrality, sesta, sex work, smear campaign, telecom
Firms: eff
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