FreePress (USA)

WASHINGTON -- Arizona State University is reportedly blocking students’ access to Change.org and to messages from the site to ASU email addresses. A popular website that uses petitions to create social change, Change.org is hosting a petition by ASU students to lower tuition rates.

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Six months into Comcast’s FCC-mandated program to provide low-income households with affordable broadband, communities are finding it difficult to access the offer. And police in Oakland, Calif., arrested seven credentialed journalists during an Occupy protest.

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Last November Free Press released On the Chopping Block: State Budget Battles and the Future of Public Media, an inventory of dramatic state-level funding cuts to public broadcasting.

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Internet censorship. Massive media mergers. Attacks on public and independent media. Not to mention all that slanted, horse race-style election coverage that does nothing to inform or inspire.

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Remember Carrier IQ, the company that makes the secret spying software that’s installed on more than 140 million phones? You know, the software that can record our most sensitive personal data?

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On Saturday, six journalists, many with press credentials, were arrested when Oakland, Calif. police clashed with Occupy protesters. These arrests bring the total number of journalists detained in Occupy protests nationwide to nearly 50. Free Press has been tracking journalist arrests and press suppression related to the Occupy movement since September.

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While most of the attention surrounding journalist arrests at Occupy protests has focused on New York City, where more than 20 journalists have been detained, it looks like Oakland will be giving the Big Apple a run for its money. On Jan. 28, Oakland police detained six journalists during mass arrests of Occupy protesters. This comes just weeks after Oakland police apprehended

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WASHINGTON -- On Monday, Rep. Ed Markey will introduce a discussion draft of a bill aimed at giving cellphone users more information on the monitoring software that may exist on their phones. The bill would also require disclosure of how any data that software collects is used and shared.

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The FCC is considering new rules that would give viewers more information about how broadcasters use the public airwaves. And a new Free Press report explores the dependency between those who control political power and those who control the airwaves — and recommends ways to change this dynamic.

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WASHINGTON -- On Thursday, Free Press released Citizens Inundated, a report that follows the money trail from big-spending political donors to the bank accounts of the nation's largest broadcast companies.

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The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has already picked a winner in the 2012 elections: TV broadcasters.

Companies like CBS Corp., News Corp. and Sinclair Broadcast Group are already dividing the spoils of an election year that will see unprecedented spending on political ads.

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In last night’s State of the Union address, President Obama called for a “renewal of American values.” However, over the course of his wide-ranging speech, he made no mention of one core value: the fundamental role of the free press in America.

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WASHINGTON -- On Tuesday, the Free Press Action Fund called on Congress to return campaign donations from the Motion Picture Association of America.

In an interview last week, MPAA President Chris Dodd, a former U.S. senator, threatened to cut off campaign donations to members of Congress who vote against legislation the MPAA supports.

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In the media reform world, we often say we’re fighting for “better” media. Of course, “better” is the sort of word that begs comparison: better than what? If we’re to demand more of our local broadcasters, we need to know what’s wrong with the status quo.

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WASHINGTON – On Friday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced he would delay a vote on the PROTECT IP Act. A cloture vote on the controversial legislation had been scheduled for Tuesday.

Craig Aaron, president and CEO of the Free Press Action Fund, made the following statement:

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Thanks to the participation of thousands of websites in a well-publicized protest against SOPA and PIPA, the bills finally began making headlines on TV news programs — and changing minds in Congress. And many traditional and new media outlets are sending predominantly male staff on the campaign trail, despite the fact that 53 percent of voters are women.

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WASHINGTON – On Thursday, News Corp. admitted to British officials that “senior employees and directors” of the company’s British newspaper division, News Group Newspapers, knew about illegal phone hacking by News of the World staff “and sought to conceal it by deliberately deceiving investigators and destroying evidence.”

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WASHINGTON -- On Thursday, Verizon Wireless, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox and Bright House Networks announced that they would provide the Federal Communications Commission with copies of the companies' joint marketing agreements to resell each other’s services.

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Our local media outlets are being stripped for parts. Aided by decades of bad policymaking, the large companies that control most of the broadcast outlets across the country are laying off local DJs, shuttering local newsrooms and inching ever closer toward creating monopolies in local marketplaces.

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WASHINGTON -- On Wednesday, AT&T announced that it would raise data prices for new customers by up to 20 percent.

Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner made the following statement:

"AT&T's price increases are becoming more frequent than the dreaded annual cable TV rate hikes.

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