Assemblyman Joe Morelle’s letter to N.Y. regulators failed this online plagiarism checker when it found the majority of the text was lifted from Comcast’s own press statements and congressional testimony, without attribution.

News that Assemblyman Joe Morelle cut and pasted the majority of his letter to New York regulators directly from a Comcast press release and executive testimony before Congress has begun to create some problems for the assemblyman and his office.

The story has been picked up by a Rochester television station, two New York newspapers and the National Journal (so far). We have now learned that Assemblyman Morelle also cashed a $1,000 campaign contribution check from Comcast earlier this year.

In response to our story, the assemblyman’s office today issued a litany of excuses about why it now fronts for Comcast, none of them particularly convincing. In fact, the damage control effort may actually be making the problems for Mr. Morelle and Comcast worse:

WROC-TV:

Sean Hart, said Comcast approached the assemblyman for his support. “They provided a draft letter of support for our consideration. We made several edits of the letter. This is common practice for any organization asking for an elected official’s support to provide a sample letter.”

Comcast is not an “organization.” It is a multi-billion dollar telecommunications and entertainment conglomerate. We are grateful to have confirmation that Comcast is sending out “templates” to elected officials with talking points already prepared and ready to go. The only issue is whether an elected official will steer clear of promoting giant corporate merger deals they don’t understand (and Mr. Morelle clearly does not have a clue.)

Did Mr. Morelle consult with his own constituents before deciding to tote water for Comcast? Not that we are aware of. Even the Public Service Commission’s own staff recognizes the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers communicating with them on this issue (nearly 3,000 and counting), are vehemently opposed to the deal. Many have past personal experiences dealing with Comcast, and they don’t have the benefit of a $1,000 check from the cable company to give them warm feelings of goodwill.

Although it may be common practice for a company to do this kind of advocacy work, it is not common for most elected officials to barely rewrite the company’s own press releases and executive testimony. Out of thousands of elected officials in New York, only a dozen or so have weighed in with the PSC on this issue.

Our favorite attempt at damage control came from Mr. Hart’s comments to The Journal News:

“It is common practice for an organization seeking support to provide a sample letter with suggested language,” Hart wrote. “I am certain if you were to review letters of support for any number of projects/causes submitted by elected officials, at every level of government, you would find that many opt to extract language from a sample letter provided to them.”

Hart rejected the suggestion that Morelle plagiarized the Comcast and Time Warner executives’ testimony, as suggested by Stop the Cap. The letter to the Public Service Commission was signed by Morelle and printed on official Assembly letterhead.

“I realize I probably do not need to point this out to a journalist, but the definition of plagiarism is ‘an act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of another author without authorization and the representation of that author’s work as one’s own,'” Hart wrote. “Morelle has authorization from Comcast to use the language included in his letter to the NYSPSC.”

He continued: “It is one thing to disagree with the Majority Leader’s opinion. It is another to make outlandish claims that lack merit.”

Morelle

We have reviewed over 8,000 comments filed with regulators on the state and national level since 2008. We have rarely encountered a cut and paste job as obvious as Mr. Morelle’s letter. When you review as many filings as we do, when talking points are quoted word for word, it stands out because we have heard them from Comcast again and again.

Mr. Hart does not help Mr. Morelle’s cause defending the fact he had Comcast’s permission to cut and paste their press releases in comments sent on the Majority Leader’s letterhead and signed by him personally. Comcast could and should have co-signed it. The fact that it happened at all should ring alarm bells for any voter, particularly those who don’t appreciate an elected official inviting America’s most-hated cable company into New York State.

As for the matter of plagiarism, perhaps we missed the part where Mr. Morelle made sure to credit the source for his testimonial. Oh wait, we didn’t. It wasn’t in there. Would Mr. Hart’s excuses fly by your college professor after being caught cutting and pasting someone else’s words in a paper you ostensibly wrote without any attribution?

Maybe we were wrong, so we decided to run Mr. Morelle’s letter through an online plagiarism checker to see what it thought.

Uh oh: Grammarly not only fired off a warning, but a full-scale “!” plagiarism alert, even after we discounted our own (and others) coverage of the story, which also quotes from his letter.

If Mr. Hart wants to attack us for exposing the sordid affair, we’re fine with that. We’re tough and can take it. He’ll find few (unpaid) defenders of Comcast to stand with the assemblyman.

Frankly, the only “outlandish claims that lack merit” are Comcast’s promises for New York. If Mr. Morelle is that comfortable extending his own credibility to vouch for Comcast, we’ll still be around to remind his constituents the promised dreams of better days inevitably devolved into a consumer nightmare, just as it has in Comcast’s primary service areas. Voters should know Comcast has Joe Morelle’s full and unwavering support.

The best damage control? Rescind the letter. All will be forgiven. Mr. Morelle won’t be the first (or last) elected official suffering collateral damage from Comcast.

New York State Assembly Leader Joe Morelle (D-Rochester) plagiarized large sections of a Comcast press release and the Congressional testimony of Comcast’s executive vice president David Cohen in a letter sent to the New York Public Service Commission endorsing the cable company’s bid to merge with Time Warner Cable.

Morelle evidently ignored or was unaware of his constituents’ overwhelming opposition to the merger deal and seemed unfazed about Comcast’s long record of dreadful customer service, constant rate increases, and the company’s plan to reimplement usage limits on consumer broadband accounts. Morelle simply cut and pasted Comcast’s own words in his letter about the merger, as we illustrate below:

N.Y. State Assembly Leader Joe Morelle: “The combination of Comcast and Time Warner Cable will create a world-class communications, media and technology company to help meet the increasing consumer demand for advanced digital services on multiple devices in homes, workplaces and on-the-go.”

David Cohen, executive vice-president, Comcast: “The combination of Comcast and TWC will create a world-class communications, media, and technology company to help meet the insatiable consumer demand for advanced digital services on multiple devices in homes, workplaces, and on-the-go.”

 

Joe Morelle: “Comcast has a proven record of investing in new technologies, facilities and customer support to provide the best in broadband Internet access, video and digital voice services.”

David Cohen: “Comcast has a proven record of investing in new technologies, facilities, and customer support to provide the best in broadband Internet access, video, and digital voice services.”

 

Joe Morelle: “Similarly, TWC has made significant strides in offering a diverse array of video, broadband, and voice services to its customers.”

David Cohen: “Similarly, TWC has made significant strides in offering a diverse array of video, broadband, and voice services to its customers.”

 

Joe Morelle: “Combining the two companies’ complementary strengths will accelerate the deployment of next-generation broadband Internet, video and voice services across the new company’s footprint.”

David Cohen: “Combining the two companies’ complementary strengths will accelerate the deployment of next-generation broadband Internet, video, and voice services across the new company’s footprint.”

 

Joe Morelle: “Residential customers will benefit from technological innovations including a superior video experience, higher broadband speeds and the fastest in-home Wi-Fi, while also generating significant cost savings and other efficiencies.”

Comcast Press Release: “Through this merger, more American consumers will benefit from technological innovations, including a superior video experience, higher broadband speeds, and the fastest in-home Wi-Fi. The transaction also will generate significant cost savings and other efficiencies.”

 

Joe Morelle: “In just two-and-a-half years, over 350,000 families, representing approximately 1.4 million low-income consumers, have been connected to the Internet thanks to this program. This proposed merger would extend this vital program to many more low-income households in New York by providing access to it in certain areas of the state currently only served by Time Warner.

David Cohen: “In just two and a half years, over 300,000 families, representing some 1.2 million low-income consumers, have been connected to the transformative power of the Internet thanks to this program. The transaction will extend this vital program to millions more Americans in the areas currently served by TWC.”

Three cable operators have announced additions to their TV Everywhere services that let cable television subscribers stream certain cable networks from home computers and portable wireless devices.

Time Warner and Bright House are inching towards making their apps more useful with new deals that will allow viewing outside of the home. Unsurprisingly, Time Warner has managed to sign a deal with their potential new owner — Comcast/NBCUniversal —  that includes anywhere-viewing of live and on demand content from NBCUniversal’s suite of cable networks including USA Network, Syfy, Telemundo, Bravo, Oxygen, CNBC, MSNBC, mun2, NBC Sports Network, and Golf Channel, as well as local NBC and Telemundo-owned broadcast stations.

Since Time Warner Cable handles cable programming negotiations for Bright House Networks, both customers will receive the enhanced service.

Within the next few days, customers will have access to the NBC Sports Live Extra and Golf Live Extra services via apps on iOS and Android devices, as well as online. Access to the remaining broadcast and cable networks will become available to Time Warner Cable and Bright House customers starting in September, and continuing on an ongoing basis. Customers must verify their subscription to begin watching.

Unfortunately, there are only a handful of NBC-owned and operated broadcast stations across both companies’ service areas. In most cases, local affiliate stations are owned and operated by other corporate entities and will not be included in this deal.

Mediacom Communications has expanded its own TV Everywhere package, adding NFL Network and NFL RedZone this week, along with mobile access to FX, FXX, FX Movies, National Geographic and National Geographic Wild.

Mediacom now offers 40 channels for out-of-home viewing and plans to add FOX Sports Go and other popular sports networks by September.

“TV Everywhere allows Mediacom customers to always be connected to live entertainment and information,” said Mediacom senior vice president Ed Pardini. “Adding new channels to this service extends the value of a video subscription by giving customers more options to view their favorite programs when and where they want, whether that’s the big screen in living rooms or with the convenience of a mobile device.”

Mediacom customers looking for NFL Network and NFL RedZone on smartphones and tablets must download the free NFL Mobile App by going to the web site. Mediacom is now listed as a participating provider. Customers should log in with their Mediacom email address and username.

Downtown Syracuse (Image: Post-Standard)

The city of Syracuse is facing an unpleasant broadband reality: the current cable company is about to be bought out by Comcast (which has usage caps in store for broadband customers) and the phone company has thrown in the towel on further expanding FiOS — fiber to the home broadband.

Mayor Stephanie Miner isn’t willing to let the city get trapped by a lack of broadband options from Comcast and Verizon, so she’s developing a plan to build a publicly owned alternative.

“I’m putting together a plan that we can do it ourselves, as a community,” Miner told the Post-Standard. 

If approved, Syracuse would join Chattanooga, Lafayette, La.,  Wilson and Salisbury, N.C., and several other cities providing local citizens with broadband speeds up to 1,000/1,000Mbps.

“Would we have to do that in phases? What would that look like? How would we pay for it? What would the model be? Those are all things that we are currently looking at, ” Miner noted.

Many of those questions have already been worked out by the best clearinghouse Stop the Cap! knows for excellent community broadband project development: the team at the Institute for Local Self Reliance.

The Community Broadband Networks Initiative of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, works with communities across the United States to create the policies needed to make sure telecommunications networks serve the community rather than a community serving the network. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance is a non-profit organization that started in Washington D.C. in 1974.

ILSR’s Mission:

The Institute’s mission is to provide innovative strategies, working models and timely information to support environmentally sound and equitable community development. To this end, ILSR works with citizens, activists, policymakers and entrepreneurs to design systems, policies and enterprises that meet local or regional needs; to maximize human, material, natural and financial resources; and to ensure that the benefits of these systems and resources accrue to all local citizens.

No community should attempt to build a community broadband network without first consulting with ILSR. They are particularly effective at helping combat the misinformation campaigns that often arise when an incumbent duopoly discovers they are about to get serious competition for the first time.

If your community wants something better than the local cable and phone company, have your local official(s) E-mail or call Christopher Mitchell at ILSR: 612-276-3456 x209

With entrenched providers unwilling to meet the needs of communities for affordable fast Internet, more American communities are providing the service themselves, much as they take care of local roads, bridges, and other public infrastructure. Comcast’s toll information superhighway may work wonders for shareholders, but it leaves most customers cold. Syracuse, like most upstate New York cities, has also watched Verizon flee from investments in FiOS expansion beyond a handful of wealthy suburbs. Verizon has diverted much of its investment away from wired networks in favor of wireless, a much more profitable business.