Monthly Archives: April 2021

Whitewashed: why does Australian TV have such a problem with race? – The Guardian

Posted: April 19, 2021 at 7:21 am

When the Australian soap opera Neighbours introduced its first non-white family in 1993 the Lims from Hong Kong their first major storyline was to be accused of eating another neighbours dog.

Admittedly, the person doing the accusing was Julie Martin, a character known for being obnoxious, and described by the official Neighbours book as unbearable. Eventually, in a triumph for race relations, they were vindicated. After six weeks, they were written out. The dog, Holly, stayed around for five more years.

Historically, Australian television both scripted and not has been overwhelmingly white and Anglo-Saxon, more so than the population.

Recently, Indigenous actors Shareena Clanton and Meyne Wyatt revealed that they had experienced racism and racial slurs on the set of Neighbours. Fellow Neighbours alum Sharon Johal told Guardian Australia she endured direct, indirect and casual racism on set, including being referred to as the black one, and mimicked with an Indian accent like Apu from The Simpsons.

The former host of the long-running variety show Hey Hey Its Saturday, Daryl Somers, recently apologised to the singer Kamahl for repeated unsolicited jokes about his skin colour and race when he made guest appearances in the 1980s.

A montage of segments, recently circulated on Twitter, showed a joke that Kamahls album would go black instead of gold or platinum, the singer getting hit in the face with white powder and told Youre a real white man now, and a caricature of him sitting in a stew pot with a bone through his nose.

The TV historian Andrew Mercado says television in Australia has generally been whiter and less representative of the general population, compared with the UK and US, though that is changing.

Mercado says he can find only three instances where Australian Indigenous characters were featured on the main competitor to Neighbours, Channel Sevens Home and Away, across 32 years.

One of those was a dream sequence in which the character Alf Stewart imagined himself transformed into an Indigenous man, due to a brain tumour.

One actor was Wes Patten, who played a student called Kevin Baker in 1993, Mercado says. One was a ghost that Alf imagined he was, when he was dying of a brain tumour on the operating table. Luke Carroll played Dr Lewis Rigg, for seven weeks. He is their last and most recent, in 2007.

The Alf Stewart storyline, he says, doesnt even count [as representation]. He wasnt real.

The set-up was he was having a brain tumour and he was imagining things Alf was walking around in the body of an Aboriginal man, who was played by David Ngoombujarra.

Now, he says, Home and Away features a Maori family, the Parata family, played by Rob Kipa-Williams, Kawakawa Fox-Reo and Ethan Browne.

And Neighbours, at least recently, has surged ahead of Home and Away in representation. Current characters include hearing-impaired teacher Curtis, played by Nathan Borg, and transgender student Mackenzie, played by Georgie Stone.

Both were cast after the actors pitched themselves to the show, and their characters storylines are written in consultation with the actors.

Yet, when it comes to race, Mercado says both and especially Channel Seven have a lot to do.

He draws comparisons with The Heights, a two-season soap opera commissioned by the ABC set in a public housing tower, and with New Zealands Shortland Street.

The Heights screened in the UK during the pandemic last year and averaged a million viewers a day the same as Neighbours in the UK.

What I liked about The Heights wasnt just that they had a family that was Indigenous, it was the fact that there was another man who lived in the building who was also Indigenous, who was not related to them, Mercado says. The Indigenous characters had other Indigenous friends in the show to speak to I thought it was extraordinarily well done and I wish the ABC would do more.

The cast of Shortland Street is a third Mori or Polynesian, which frequently rises to 50% when you include guest roles.

And that is their No 1 commercial TV show, he says.

In the UK, soaps like EastEnders and Hollyoaks have featured many more non-white faces for years, though Mercado points out that Hollyoaks was criticised by many of its actors last year for similar issues of racism.

And, he says: Coronation Street, which has been going for 60 years, has only recently brought in a black family.

In 1989, another mainstream Australian show, A Country Practice, was years ahead of its competitors.

Prof Gary Foley, an academic at Victoria University, and Indigenous activist who helped found the Canberra Tent Embassy, featured in a guest role on the show over four episodes.

Crucially, Foley says, he was allowed to write his character himself.

[Creator] Jim Davern rung me up and asked me if I was interested, Foley told Guardian Australia. I said I was only interested if I could write my own character and my own dialogue. The character I wanted to play was an Aboriginal Christian pastor who advocated land rights.

I didnt have any of the sort of problems that the people on Neighbours did.

Kim Lester, who along with Melanie Tait, hosts A Country Podcast, said that Foleys appearance was a model that other shows of the time could have used to create better representation.

Lester says that A Country Practice was still not the most multicultural show and in an interview with Davern he acknowledged it was a product of its time.

But as early as 1982 it featured a storyline about a gay couple who were rejected by their community, which Lester says was essentially unprecedented on commercial TV.

Foley says: It was a productive time for me because the message I was trying to get across about land rights for Aboriginal people got through, and it got through to the biggest audience of my life. It went to 28 different countries.

Which brings us to the Lim family. Their dog storyline was intended to be a parable against racism, but the reaction was overwhelmingly negative, Mercado says.

In their really clunky way, that was them trying to say look at the discrimination they face, he says. But if there was any good intended to it, it was lost in the delivery.

By the time her character had seen the error of her ways, she made friends with her new neighbours, but they were dispatched after six weeks.

Mercado says it is fear of change that is keeping screens so white.

I believe that the main structural issue that keeps Australian TV so white is network executives who are still all mostly male, straight and white, he says. Until they include more diverse decision makers, and stop second-guessing their audience, nothing will change.

Foley tells Guardian Australia that the revelations on Neighbours are nothing new.

Its not a question of trying to do something on the set of Neighbours, it is a question of the whole of Australia coming together to expose the elephant in the room white Australian racism, notions of white supremacy that Australians held until the latter half of the half of the 20th century.

Recently Somers now hosting Dancing With the Stars said Hey Hey Its Saturday would not be able to be aired today due to political correctness.

Mercado says that argument is the stupidest thing.

People have a sugar-coated memory of what it was like, he says. I always say to those people watch an episode of that show from beginning to end.

There is edgy and dangerous comedy on Australian TV all the time now. The difference is if you look at a show like Have You Been Paying Attention, they make Asian jokes about Sam Pang, because he is on the show with them. Not a guest who drops in every five months. He was on the show to start with.

A show like Pizza or Housos is as politically incorrect as you can get. They are making fun of everybody, because everybody is in the show.

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Agiomix is selected as the Official Operator for the Egyptian Genome Project – PRNewswire

Posted: at 7:18 am

Agiomix has been selected by the project as the Official Operator; under its roles Agiomix will provide technical and operational support for the project as per the signed contract with the Egyptian Center for Research and Regenerative Medicine, that will be entrusted to run the project.

Dr. Walaa Allam, Associate Director of Business development at Agiomix, commented on the news: "We take great pride in being part of the 'Egyptian Genome Project' family; we believe that our expertise with Genomics in the region will enable us to provide the necessary support to this ambitious project."

About Agiomix

Agiomix is a leading Clinical Genetics and Specialty Diagnostics Laboratory, serving patients, healthcare providers and partner laboratories across the globe, with focus on the Middle East, Africa and Asia markets. Agiomix is both CAP and ISO 15189 accredited. For more information, please visit http://www.agiomix.com.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1490403/Agiomix_Labs_Dubai.jpg

Contact: Sonam Khandelwal+971 800-GENOMICS[emailprotected]

SOURCE AGIOMIX

Medical Laboratory in Dubai

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Scientists are on a path to sequencing 1 million human genomes and use big data to unlock genetic secrets – GCN.com

Posted: at 7:18 am

Scientists are on a path to sequencing 1 million human genomes and use big data to unlock genetic secrets

The first draft of the human genome waspublished 20 years agoin2001, took nearly three years and costbetween US$500 million and $1 billion. TheHuman Genome Projecthas allowed scientists to read, almost end to end, the 3 billion pairs of DNA bases or letters that biologically define a human being.

That project has allowed a new generation ofresearchers like me, currently a postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute, to identifynovel targets for cancer treatments, engineermice with human immune systemsand even build awebpage where anyone can navigate the entire human genomewith the same ease with which you use Google Maps.

The first complete genome was generated from a handful of anonymous donors to try to produce a reference genome that represented more than just one single individual. But this fell far short of encompassingthe wide diversity of human populations in the world. No two people are the same and no two genomes are the same, either. If researchers wanted to understand humanity in all its diversity, it would take sequencing thousands or millions of complete genomes. Now, a project like that is underway.

Understanding genetic diversity

The wealth of genetic variation among people is what makes each person unique. But genetic changes also cause many disorders and make some groups of people more susceptible to certain diseases than others.

Around the time of the Human Genome Project, researchers were also sequencing the complete genomes of organisms such asmice,fruit flies,yeastsandsome plants. The huge effort made to generate these first genomes led to a revolution in the technology required to read genomes. Thanks to these advances, instead of taking years and costing hundreds of millions of dollars to sequence a whole human genome, it now takesa few days and costs merely a thousand dollars. Genome sequencing is very different from genotyping services like 23 and Me or Ancestry, which look at only a tiny fraction of locations in a persons genome.

Advances in technology have allowed scientists to sequence the complete genomes of thousands of individuals from around the world. Initiatives such as theGenome Aggregation Consortiaare currently making efforts to collect and organize this scattered data. So far, that group has been able to gather nearly150,000 genomesthat show an incredible amount of human genetic diversity. Within that set, researchers have found more than 241 million differences in peoples genomes,with an average of one variant for every eight base pairs.

Most of these variations are very rare and will have no effect on a person. However, hidden among them are variants with important physiological and medical consequences. For example, certain variants in the BRCA1 gene predispose some groups of woman, like Ashkenazi Jews, toovarian and breast cancer. Other variants in that gene lead someNigerian women to experience higher-than-normal mortalityfrom breast cancer.

The best way researchers can identify these types of population-level variants is throughgenomewide association studiesthat compare the genomes of large groups of people with a control group. But diseases are complicated. An individuals lifestyle, symptoms and time of onset can vary greatly, and the effect of genetics on many diseases is hard to distinguish. The predictive power of current genomic research is too low to tease out many of these effects becausethere isnt enough genomic data.

Understanding the genetics of complex diseases, especially those related to the genetic differences among ethnic groups, is essentially a big data problem. And researchers need more data.

1,000,000 genomes

To address the need for more data, the National Institutes of Health has started a program calledAll of Us. The project aims to collect genetic information, medical records and health habits from surveys and wearables of more than a million people in the U.S. over the course of 10 years. It also has a goal of gathering more data from underrepresented minority groups to facilitate the study of health disparities. TheAll of Us projectopened to public enrollment in 2018, and more than 270,000 people have contributed samples since. The project is continuing to recruit participants from all 50 states. Participating in this effort are many academic laboratories and private companies.

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What we can learn from sequencing 1 million human genomes with big data – The Next Web

Posted: at 7:18 am

The first draft of the human genome was published 20 years ago in 2001, took nearly three years and cost between US$500 million and $1 billion. The Human Genome Project has allowed scientists to read, almost end to end, the 3 billion pairs of DNA bases or letters that biologically define a human being.

That project has allowed a new generation of researchers like me, currently a postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute, to identify novel targets for cancer treatments, engineer mice with human immune systems and even build a webpage where anyone can navigate the entire human genome with the same ease with which you use Google Maps.

The first complete genome was generated from a handful of anonymous donors to try to produce a reference genome that represented more than just one single individual. But this fell far short of encompassing the wide diversity of human populations in the world. No two people are the same and no two genomes are the same, either. If researchers wanted to understand humanity in all its diversity, it would take sequencing thousands or millions of complete genomes. Now, a project like that is underway.

The wealth of genetic variation among people is what makes each person unique. But genetic changes also cause many disorders and make some groups of people more susceptible to certain diseases than others.

Around the time of the Human Genome Project, researchers were also sequencing the complete genomes of organisms such as mice, fruit flies, yeasts and some plants. The huge effort made to generate these first genomes led to a revolution in the technology required to read genomes. Thanks to these advances, instead of taking years and costing hundreds of millions of dollars to sequence a whole human genome, it now takes a few days and costs merely a thousand dollars. Genome sequencing is very different from genotyping services like 23 and Me or Ancestry, which look at only a tiny fraction of locations in a persons genome.

Advances in technology have allowed scientists to sequence the complete genomes of thousands of individuals from around the world. Initiatives such as the Genome Aggregation Consortia are currently making efforts to collect and organize this scattered data. So far, that group has been able to gather nearly 150,000 genomes that show an incredible amount of human genetic diversity. Within that set, researchers have found more than 241 million differences in peoples genomes, with an average of one variant for every eight base pairs.

Most of these variations are very rare and will have no effect on a person. However, hidden among them are variants with important physiological and medical consequences. For example, certain variants in the BRCA1 gene predispose some groups of woman, like Ashkenazi Jews, to ovarian and breast cancer. Other variants in that gene lead some Nigerian women to experience higher-than-normal mortality from breast cancer.

The best way researchers can identify these types of population-level variants is through genomewide association studies that compare the genomes of large groups of people with a control group. But diseases are complicated. An individuals lifestyle, symptoms and time of onset can vary greatly, and the effect of genetics on many diseases is hard to distinguish. The predictive power of current genomic research is too low to tease out many of these effects because there isnt enough genomic data.

Understanding the genetics of complex diseases, especially those related to the genetic differences among ethnic groups, is essentially a big data problem. And researchers need more data.

The link between genetics and disease is nuanced, but the more genomes you can study, the easier it is to find those links. Image via brian0918/Wikimedia Commons

To address the need for more data, the National Institutes of Health has started a program called All of Us. The project aims to collect genetic information, medical records and health habits from surveys and wearables of more than a million people in the U.S. over the course of 10 years. It also has a goal of gathering more data from underrepresented minority groups to facilitate the study of health disparities. The All of Us project opened to public enrollment in 2018, and more than 270,000 people have contributed samples since. The project is continuing to recruit participants from all 50 states. Participating in this effort are many academic laboratories and private companies.

This effort could benefit scientists from a wide range of fields. For instance, a neuroscientist could look for genetic variations associated with depression while taking into account exercise levels. An oncologist could search for variants that correlate with reduced risk of skin cancer while exploring the influence of ethnic background.

A million genomes and the accompanying health and lifestyle information will provide an extraordinary wealth of data that should allow researchers to discover the effects of genetic variation on diseases, not only for individuals, but also within different groups of people.

[Understand new developments in science, health and technology, each week.Subscribe to The Conversations science newsletter.]

Another benefit of this project is that it will allow scientists to learn about parts of the human genome that are currently very hard to study. Most genetic research has been on the parts of the genome that encode for proteins. However, these represent only 1.5% of the human genome.

My research focuses on RNA a molecule that turns the messages encoded in a persons DNA into proteins. However, RNAs that come from the 98.5% of the human genome that doesnt make proteins have a myriad of functions by themselves. Some of these noncoding RNAs are involved in processes such as how cancer spreads, embryonic development or controlling the X chromosome in females. In particular, I study how genetic variations can influence the intricate folding that allows noncoding RNAs to do their jobs. Since the All of Us project includes all coding and noncoding parts of the genome, it is going to be by far the largest dataset relevant to my work and will hopefully shed light on these mysterious RNAs.

The first human genome sparked 20 years of incredible scientific progress. I think it is almost certain that a huge dataset of genomic variations will unlock clues about complex diseases. Thanks to large-scale population studies and big-data projects such as All of Us, researchers are paving the way to answering, in the next decade, how our individual genetics shape our health.

This article byXavier Bofill De Ros, Research Fellow in RNA biology, National Institutes of Health,is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Second Genome to Present at the Jefferies Microbiome-Based Therapeutics Summit – PRNewswire

Posted: at 7:18 am

BRISBANE, Calif., April 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --Second Genome, a tech-enabled biotechnology company that extracts microbial genetic insights to make transformational precision therapies and biomarkers, today announced that Karim Dabbagh, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer, will present and participate in a fireside chat at the virtual Jefferies Microbiome-Based Therapeutics Summit on April 22, 2021.

The prerecorded presentation and fireside chat will be available on Thursday, April 22, 2021, at 8:00 a.m. ET and can be accessed by visiting the "News" section of the Company's website at http://www.secondgenome.com and selecting the Events tab on the News page. A replay of the webcast will be archived there following the presentation date.

About Second Genome

Second Genome is a tech-enabled biotechnology company that extracts microbial genetic insights to make transformational precision therapies and biomarkers through clinical development and commercialization. We built a proprietary microbiome-based drug discovery and development platform with machine-learning analytics, customized protein engineering techniques, phage library screening, mass spec analysis and CRISPR, that we couple with traditional drug development approaches to progress the development of therapies and diagnostics for wide-ranging diseases. Second Genome is advancing deep drug discovery and biomarker pipelines with precision therapeutics and biomarker programs in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and cancer, with the lead program SG-2-0776 in IBD expected to enter clinical development in 2022. We also collaborate with industry, academic and governmental partners to leverage our microbiome platform and data science. We hold a strategic collaboration with Gilead Sciences, Inc., utilizing our proprietary platform and comprehensive data sets to identify novel biomarkers associated with clinical response to Gilead's investigational medicines. For more information, please visit http://www.secondgenome.com.

Investor Contact:Argot Partners212-600-1902[emailprotected]

Media Contact:Argot Partners212-600-1902[emailprotected]

SOURCE Second Genome

secondgenome.com

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The Nike Air Max Genome Receives A Sharp And Simple Black And White – Sneaker News

Posted: at 7:18 am

Previewed ahead of the Swooshs fictitious March 26th holiday, the Nike Air Max Genome is set to take over the casual footwear space as it delivers comfortable solutions clad in versatile colorways.

Unlike some of the inaugural options, a forthcoming pair indulges in a simple, but sharp Black/White color palette. The mix of synthetic, textile and fabric across the upper harkens back to the early 2000s, while simultaneously fitting into the current sneaker landscape. Branding throughout the shoe delivers stark White contrast, which is highlighted at the midsole. Full-length Air Max cushioning, however, opts into a semi-opaque arrangement. Lastly, tread reverts to an understated Black color.

An official Nike.com release date is unknown, but this Air Max Genome is likely to quietly launch soon. In the meantime, enjoy images of the pair here below.

For more styles from NIKE, Inc., check out the new Jordan Delta 2.

Where to Buy

Make sure to follow @kicksfinder for live tweets during the release date.

Mens: $170Style Code: CW1648-003

Images: Nike

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Hankyung.com’s Introduces: COSMAX’s Skin Microbiome Research Becomes First of Its Kind to Be Published in International Scientific Journal -…

Posted: at 7:18 am

SEOUL, South Korea, April 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Global cosmetics research, development, and ODM company, COSMAX (CEO Lee Byung-man), and the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) have become the first in the world to reveal the correlation between the skin microbiome and skin aging.

COSMAX announced that its thesis titled, "Spermidine-induced Recovery of Dermal Structure and Barrier Function by Skin Microbiome," has been published by Nature Communications Biology.

In 2015, COSMAX identified that a person's skin flora directly regulates the skin, and the company began to carry out research related to anti-aging. After discovering that the number of microorganisms that live on the skin decreases with age, they hypothesized that it held an important key to anti-aging and started performing genetic analysis.

They named a newly-discovered microorganism "Strain-COXMAX," and together with GIST, they conducted a whole genome analysis that can trace the role of entire genomes to uncover the microorganism's anti-aging functions.

The results of the analysis revealed that the microorganism affects the aging process by regulating various metabolic functions of the skin. It was also discovered that spermidine, which is created during the metabolic process, directly impacts skin anti-aging. Furthermore, spermidine showed efficacy in improving skin moisture, elasticity, and anti-aging by activating collagenisis and lipid secretion.

"Discovering the correlation mechanism between the skin microbiome and aging is a feat that was achieved through six years of hard work," said R&I center director Park Myeong-sam. "The technology super gap will be used in the next generation of anti-aging cosmetics and biomaterials in the global market."

COXMAX is expected to expand the application of the skin microbiome to various products. Such products include:

"The publishing of skin microbiome technology in a global scientific journal creates an opportunity for the R&D status of K-beauty to be promulgated," said COSMAX CEO Lee Byung-man. "It will take center stage in the global health and beauty market by using innovative materials to develop products that don't yet exist in the world."

In 2019, COSMAX launched the world's first anti-aging cosmetics that utilize Strain-COXMAX, a culture medium with beneficial skin bacteria. By securing more than 20 beneficial microorganisms, the company has become a leader in the skin microbiome market.

https://img.hankyung.com/pdsdata/pr.hankyung.com/uploads/2021/04/20210413COSMAX.jpg< i>taken atx100000 magnification by SEM (scanning electronic microscope)>

Microbiome, which is a portmanteau of "microbe" and "biome," describes the microorganisms that inhabit the human body, as well as their genomes. The microbiome is so vast that it makes up 1 to 3 percent of the body's mass, and it has over 100 times more genes than our own genome. Called the "second genome," the microbiome could be seen as an ecosystem that holds a great deal of information about the body.

As it regulates immune functions and forms various kinds of metabolites, the microbiome is known to influence obesity, diabetes, atopic dermatitis, cancer, and autoimmune diseases. Thus, research on the exact role of the microbiome in disease and aging has greatly increased, and related markets have been experiencing rapid growth.

Since its establishment in 2015, Genome & Company has become a global leader in microbiome immuno-oncology. It focuses on developing the next waves of innovative therapeutics in immune-oncology through diverse modalities of microbiome and novel target immune checkpoint inhibitors.

SOURCE Hankyung.com

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Whole-Genome Sequencing as an Alternative to Cytogenetics in AML, MDS – Oncology Learning Network

Posted: at 7:17 am

Whole-genomesequencing (WGS) could be an alternative to conventional cytogenetic analysis in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) or myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (N Engl J Med. 2021;384[10]:924-935).

Genomic analysis is essential for risk stratification in patients with AML or MDS, said Eric J. Duncavage, MD, Department of Pathology and Immunology, McDonnell Genome Institute, and the Divisions of Oncology and Biostatistics, Department of Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, and colleagues.

DrDuncavage and colleaguesobtained the genomic profiles of 263 patients with myeloid cancers, including 235 patients who had undergone cytogenetic analysis. Using WGS, they detected all 40 recurrent translocations and 91 copy-number alterations that the cytogenetic analysis identified. In 40 patients (17%, n = 235), new clinically reportable genomic events were found.

Prospective sequencing was performed on samples taken from 117 consecutive patients over a median of 5 days and provided new genetic information in 29 patients (24.8%), which in turn, changed the risk category for 19 patients (16.2%).

The researchers concluded thatWGS provided rapid and accurate genomic profiling in patients with AML or MDS.Emily Bader

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Hawley to introduce bill to ‘bust up’ Big Tech, targeting companies like Google and Amazon – Fox News

Posted: at 7:17 am

Sen. Josh Hawley on Monday will introduce a billto "bust up" Big Tech, which willtarget massive companies like Google and Amazon, includingby banning them from simultaneously running an online marketplace and selling goods on that marketplace.

The bill, titled the Bust Up Big Tech Act,follows a bill Hawley introduced last week that would ban mergers of companies worth more than $100 billion, which was targeted more broadly than just at the tech industry.

Hawley's new, more focusedbill would also ban companies that ownonline marketplaces or search engines from owning online hosting services, Hawley's office told Fox News.

"Woke Big Tech companies like Google and Amazon have been coddled by Washington politicians for years. This treatment has allowed them to amass colossal amounts of power that they use to censor political opinions that they don't agree with and shut out competitors who offer consumers an alternative to the status quo," Hawley said in a statement. "It's past time to bust up Big Tech companies, restore competition, and give power back the American consumers."

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., plans to introduce a bill Monday that would ban major tech companies from selling products on an online marketplace that they run. (AP)

JOSH HAWLEY REVEALS PLAN TO BREAK UP BIG CORPORATE POWER: 'NO CORPORATION' SHOULD CONTROL POLITICS

Hawley's office provided two specific examples of what the Bust Up Big Tech Actwould do if enacted. It would ban Amazon from being able to sell Amazon-branded products on Amazon Marketplace, where its competitors also do business. The bill would also ban Amazon from simultaneously owning a large amount of the cloud computing services that many online companies use and continuing to run its ubiquitous retail business.

The bill would also give the Federal Trade Commission authority to monitor compliance with the law and allow state attorneys general and individual citizens to sue tech companies they believe are in violation of the law.

There are multiple other efforts in Congress to rein in the power of Big Tech, including from Democrats. It's unlikely Hawley's bill will be passed on its own without amendment, especially with Democrats in control of the House and Senate. But Hawleysaid he's open to working with Democrats where their interests align in battling tech companies.

"I'm willing to work with her and anybody of any party and any background," Hawley told Reuters last week when asked about a bill proposed by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., that is similar to his previous legislation banning mergers for certain companies.

Amazon's dominance in both online cloud computing and online retail is being targeted by a new bill from Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. (Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Some,however, are suspicious of Hawley's efforts to regulate the tech industry, a sector that's revolutionized how Americans live.

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"[H]is claims that the industry, hasnt been a success for the American economy, dont ring true for so many Americans that are employed by or invested in these economic powerhouses, not to mention the millions of consumers who enjoy tech products,"Jessica Melugin, the director of theCompetitive Enterprise Institute's (CEI) Center for Technology and Innovation, said of Hawley's merger-banning legislation.

CEI Senior Fellow Ryan Youngcalled Hawley's broader anti-tech efforts "feel-good populism" that is "just another culture war issue."

Hawley, meanwhile, frames his effort as one aimed at bringing balance back to the American economy.

"[Amazon] should be broken up," he tweeted last week,"no one company should be able to control e-commerce AND privilege its own products on the same platform AND control the cloud."

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We need a Herbert Hoover to reel in Big Tech | TheHill – The Hill

Posted: at 7:17 am

The radio industry roared onto the American scene a century ago, filling the nations airwaves with music and news, but also with commercials, wave piracy, and technological chaos. Radio quickly affected all corners of society, changing the nature of the national conversation, how products were marketed, and speeding up cultural trends with its instantaneous reach. Radio no doubt helped make the Roaring Twenties roar. Virtually nobody listened to radio in 1920. By the late twenties, practically all Americans were tuned in.

Concerns grew for what this newfangled medium meant for the nation. Nobody really knew what kind of power was suddenly in the hands of the booming radio corporations. Into this setting rode President Coolidges Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover. Hoover had a background in engineering and was fascinated by the new medium. He was also concerned about the potential influence of the electronic media and its unregulated growth.

Hoover invited scientists, educators and public service leaders to a series of conferences to study radio and its influence. These conferences set the stage for Congress to pass the Radio Act of 1927 and establish a federal agency (todays Federal Communication Commission) to oversee electronic media. The foundation of the legislation was the impact rationale, the notion that mysterious and powerful media could be so influential that the government should necessarily take a role in overseeing them on behalf of the public. Even today, radio and television broadcasters are mandated to serve the public interest, convenience and necessity.

The nation could use a Herbert Hoover today to take on Big Tech and to look out for the interests of average Americans.

Hoovers regulatory designs for the electronic media of that era were far from perfect, but at least there was some mechanism to confront technological forces on behalf of the citizenrys interests, rather than letting huge corporate interests throw their weight around with impunity.

Hoovers regulatory structure has withstood court scrutiny and the test of time. Regulations to referee political advertising on radio and TV, for example, remain today, along with controls regarding ownership. The public interest standard has been watered down, to be sure, but the FCC still rides herd on broadcasters, despite the waning influence of that industry.

Today, the Big Tech and social media giants rummage around in the nations politics and culture, getting fat financially and running amok with consumer privacy. These giants were set up largely as public forums and got the government to shield them from legal liability under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. Thus, these tech firms avoid the responsibility of being considered publishers, as a newspaper or broadcast station would be. The problem is these Big Tech giants do act as publishers, making content decisions and anointing themselves as supreme deciders of who speaks and about what.

The Big Tech behemoths are exactly what the impact rationale was designed to corral.

Finding a regulatory framework with which to address Big Tech influence will be much more difficult than what Hoover faced in the early days of broadcasting, but somebody has to grow some guts and begin the process. Hoover, too, went into uncharted territory, unafraid to address the fast and furious influence of radio.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence ThomasClarence ThomasWe need a Herbert Hoover to reel in Big Tech Trump-era grievances could get second life at Supreme Court Joe Biden's surprising presidency MORE has issued an invitation for the next Hoover to emerge and take on Big Tech. Thomas wrote a concurring opinion as the Court recently tossed out a lower court ruling about then-President TrumpDonald TrumpGraham: 'I could not disagree more' with Trump support of Afghanistan troop withdrawal GOP believes Democrats handing them winning 2022 campaign Former GOP operative installed as NSA top lawyer resigns MORE blocking people on Twitter. He wrote about the unprecedented and concentrated control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties. He went on to warn, We will soon have no choice but to address how our legal doctrines apply to highly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms.

The key for the Supreme Court will be to assess the First Amendment rights of Big Tech bullies to control and manage the flow of information in a democracy versus the rights of regular Americans to have a true public sphere in which citizens fuel the dialogue of the nation. Jumping into this fray is Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, who announced this month he is investigating how Big Tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Twitter may be harming Indiana consumers through practices Rokita calls abusive and unfair. Rokita, a Republican, is mostly concerned with the suppression of conservative points of view, of course, but his concern for the interests of tech consumers is noteworthy.

Rokita will need a bigger army to make any headway. One Attorney General from a Midwestern state will have trouble finding traction. But Justice Thomas has helped set the stage for the battle against Big Tech. He just needs to find enough would-be Hoovers to throw some punches, knowing they will probably be de-platformed in the process.

Jeffrey McCall is a media critic and professor of communication at DePauw University. He has worked as a radio news director, a newspaper reporter and as a political media consultant. Follow him on Twitter@Prof_McCall.

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We need a Herbert Hoover to reel in Big Tech | TheHill - The Hill

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