Recent Missouri editorials

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 29

Murders, assaults and suicides have all been available for posting and viewing by nearly 2 billion Facebook users around the globe. Facebook needs to re-evaluate the merits of its live video feature and ask whether the advertising income it generates is worth horrifying audiences.

The posting on Easter Sunday of a gruesome video showing the shooting death of Robert Godwin Sr. in Cleveland was online for more than two hours, prompting outrage from users and an apology from Facebook.

On Tuesday, a man in Thailand recorded himself killing his 11-month-old daughter on the rooftop of a deserted hotel in two harrowing video clips streamed on Facebook. His later suicide was not broadcast on Facebook. The videos were accessible on the man’s Facebook page for about 24 hours before they were taken down, according to The Guardian, a London-based daily newspaper.

Facebook’s live video format is not even a year old and already has become an unwieldy service that chief executive Mark Zuckerberg acknowledges needs tighter control. Facebook said that Steve Stephens, 37, who shot and killed Godwin, 74, uploaded the video after he recorded it, so it was not a live video. That distinction is lost on most viewers.

Facebook has legitimate reasons for not wanting to overly arbitrate what users may post, but the consequences of that reluctance are obvious, especially to anyone exposed to such grisly videos.

Media companies have huge platforms that can reach millions, and in rare cases such as Facebook, billions of people. Adhering to basic standards of social responsibility is critical given that reach. Just as freedom of speech stops with yelling fire in a crowded theater, reluctance to intervene online must stop with the depiction of crimes, suicides and assaults.

These videos are a form of pornography that do not meet any reasonable test for community standards. Facebook is believed to have the technical ability to weed out such postings, possibly even before they go live.

Facebook’s problems with policing content mushroomed with its live video platform, which is designed to draw more lucrative advertising. Marketers say companies like live video because it lets them engage with audiences in an immediate way that is more effective than pre-recorded content.

After the Godwin shooting, Zuckerberg said the company has a lot of work to do to “prevent tragedies like this from happening.” The company said it would review its reporting flows to make sure viewers can easily report material that violates standards.

Facebook should also expand staff monitoring instead of relying on user reports and use artificial intelligence to capture problems, as it currently does with keeping child pornography, terrorist videos and copyright-protected content offline.

Zuckerberg started Facebook as a purely social website. But with its success comes the obligation of social responsibility.

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Kansas City Star, April 27

The public transportation industry is changing in Kansas City - and everywhere else.

(Last) week, Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens signed legislation regulating app-based ride-sharing services including Lyft and Uber. The new rules, encouraged by lobbyists from the companies, are looser than those passed by the Kansas City Council.

It didn’t take long for the city’s traditional ride-for-hire company, Yellow Taxi, to say it would move most of its drivers into a similar service. It’s called zTrip.

At the same time, the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority announced a one-year pilot program offering a similar ride-on-demand feature. The original idea was to provide transportation for the disabled, but the service, called RideKC Freedom On-Demand, will be available to anyone.

We’ve come a long way from sticking a hand in the air to hail a cabbie.

We like the changes coming to the city’s private transportation infrastructure. But that’s not really the point: Phone-based ride-sharing is here, whether we like it or not.

Now, Kansas City must ensure the new systems do what they say they’ll do: provide cheaper transportation that’s more convenient and that provides jobs for lots of our neighbors.

We’re disappointed that the new state law relaxes background checks for transit drivers. Kansas City wanted such checks conducted annually; the new state law waives that requirement.

By the way, we’re also worried that state lawmakers keep overriding local regulations. Stop it.

The city should keep a close eye on what the new requirements mean for riders’ safety. After a year, it will want to assess whether accidents are more common with ride-sharing vehicles than with traditional cabs.

The city should also ask the police department to maintain a database of accidents involving ride-sharing vehicles such as Uber and Lyft. Perhaps the police can keep track of speeding violations, too.

While we’re at it, the city - or the state - will want to watch how drivers are treated. Uber drivers seem particularly angry at the company, complaining about wages and poor labor conditions.

While we applaud the KCATA’s new on-demand service, we want to keep a close eye on how the pilot program works as well.

The transportation authority is supported by taxpayers. Of its $96.5 million budget, only $11.5 million comes from operations. The rest - including $60 million raised through sales taxes - comes from public sources.

That taxpayer support gives the authority an unfair advantage if it decides to compete directly with Uber, Lyft and zTrip. That doesn’t seem to be a problem yet, but the possibility is worth watching.

And the KCATA should not allow itself to be distracted from the business of bus service. Its main mission is still getting Kansas Citians from one place to another, cheaply and safely. The bus remains the priority. That shouldn’t change.

We hope and expect these caveats won’t be relevant a year from now. Kansas City is fully embracing the 21st century of public transit. But the new transportation landscape requires careful navigation.

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Columbia Daily Tribune, May 1

The other day at an occasional meeting between the UM president and his “friends,” the crowd said farewell to Interim MU Chancellor Hank Foley, who is on his way to a college presidency in New York.

Friends of Hank, and I think Hank himself, were disappointed he did not gain quick installation as permanent chancellor here, but in retrospect he has achieved a serendipitous moment in his career.

He trades a rocky road here for a very advantageous career move

As incoming UM President Mun Choi explained later in the program, the University of Missouri system faces the most difficult financial straits in years. Enrollment and support from the General Assembly both are down, leading President Choi to tell UM curators the system must prepare for budget cuts as much as 12 percent.

The university will increase tuition as much as possible under state rules, but even so the system night have to make do with $30 million less, much from our flagship MU campus.

Choi is making a commendable response. He acknowledges tough budgetary choices but he is optimistic about maintaining and improving the quality of education. In the large and comprehensive MU budget he sees opportunities for reforming priorities. This reallocation of resources is challenging to the status quo, but even if not required by tight finances it can enhance the quality and efficiency of the institution.

No firm decisions have been made but Choi is not mincing words. He and his planners will look for programs that do least to further the quality and reputation of UM, that provide the least in financial support by attracting relatively few students.

Does this sound hard-hearted? A manager of a huge higher education establishment at a time of financial shortage has no choice. Campus constituencies should welcome an analytical, empirical approach to budget-making over any alternative. Surely they don’t want a chancellor or president to play favorites for wrong reasons. A newcomer like Choi must take a fresh look at operations. Starting with hard numbers is the only place to start. Most programs will gain approval and will be glad they survived a tough analysis.

A looming budget shortage at MU is not a new concern. Already campus planners have had to develop a plan to encourage faculty retirement. Personnel costs are the big item in the budget, including ongoing pension and health care costs. As they grew with expanding budgets, universities like UM provided relatively generous benefits, sometimes in lieu of high salaries. With the help of the legislature, MU has done a good job maintaining pension funding, but when a downturn occurs in employee numbers budget managers must be nimble and employees must adjust.

The biggest bang might come with the elimination of entire programs here at MU where the catalog of courses has grown the most. MU has one of the most comprehensive course catalogs anywhere. For understandable reason, the push for new programs has been incessant. Successful program managers want more of the same. Aspiring and excited deans want to plow new ground. The excitement of growth is infectious, only matched by the fervor of preservation if the beloved apparatus is threatened with reduction.

All of us want President Choi to maintain all he can. Particularly here in flagship country all of us welcome every dime of MU money. But in today’s environment the best thing that can happen for the state university is creative reallocation of resources. Many of the university’s most important programs are located here at MU, deserving of ongoing support.

Let us support the necessary effort of President Choi & Co. to reform the budget. The university will be better for it. If the operation gets more efficient now it will be in better position when revenues turn up again.

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Joplin Globe, April 28

Missouri needs to build a bridge. Gov. Eric Greitens is working to lay the foundation.

The gap to be bridged isn’t physical. It’s digital. Fast internet access is essential to education and more.

We need to find a way to make that access widely available, particularly in rural and low-income areas.

Greitens recently announced a push to put broadband internet in every school in the state. His plan is to work with the Legislature to appropriate $9 million in state funding to unlock $39 million in federal funds through the Federal Communications Commission’s E-Rate program.

The governor is also working with nonprofit partners Education Superhighway and MOREnet on the initiative.

Today’s students work with interactive media in learning programs that require high-speed broadband access. Students complete and submit a majority of their work online. Connectivity is key.

A report from the National Conference of State Legislatures sums up the situation: “Access to high-speed internet in schools is particularly important for rural and low-income communities.

“When internet connections in schools are too slow, and students don’t have access at home, students miss the benefits of educational technologies altogether.”

More than 100 Missouri schools lack quality internet access, according to a release from Greitens’ office.

The project is a great start. But it is just the beginning.

In his announcement, Greitens said, “We got to work and developed a long-term plan to bring quality internet access to Missouri’s small towns. This is an important first step on that mission and a big achievement.”

The governor is correct. This is a first step. But rural and impoverished communities lack access at home, leaving students unable to complete homework without trekking to school or a library. This puts those students at a deep disadvantage.

Companies are reluctant to go to the expense of running fiber optic lines to rural areas, where miles of cable will serve small pools of customers.

As we did with highway, electricity and telephone systems, we must find a way to push next-generation internet access into rural areas. This may require co-ops, subsidies, tax breaks or some combination to encourage providers to cross the gap. Internet access has become essential to not only education, but to multiple aspects of our daily lives. That trend will only accelerate.

Finding a way across the digital divide to provide all Missouri residents access to broadband should be our goal.