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Despite congressional opposition, the Federal Communications Commission plans to send researchers to oversee TV and radio newsrooms, casting what promises to be a chill on freedom of the press.
When House Republicans got wind of the plan in December, they sent a letter to the FCC, according to The Hill.
“Given the widespread calls for the Commission to respect the First Amendment and stay out of the editorial decisions of reporters and broadcasters, we were shocked to see that the FCC is putting itself back in the business of attempting to control the political speech of journalists,” the Republicans wrote in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. “It is wrong, it is unconstitutional, and we urge you to put a stop to this most recent attempt to engage the FCC as the ‘news police.'”
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, informed the public that as of last week, the agency’s plans were still very much in the works. He said:
Last May the FCC proposed an initiative to thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country. With its “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” or CIN, the agency plans to send researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run. A field test in Columbia, S.C., is scheduled to begin this spring.
The purpose of the CIN, according to the FCC, is to ferret out information from television and radio broadcasters about “the process by which stories are selected” and how often stations cover “critical information needs,” along with “perceived station bias” and “perceived responsiveness to underserved populations.”
Journalists are now up in arms. The last thing a newsroom needs is a Soviet-style political officer looking over the shoulders of reporters and editors, and helping them shape the news to the Obama administration’s liking.
If FCC officials want to learn how stories are selected, they can go to journalism school. Otherwise, stay out of the newsroom.
The agency’s infiltration of the reporting process defeats the purpose of a free and independent press — to serve as a check to an overreaching government.
Townhall Editor Katie Pavlich appeared on “The Kelly File” Wednesday and discussed the latest developments of this story with Fox News host Megyn Kelly.
Watch the exchange via Fox News, then check out, “TV newsman’s dead-on, hilarious video: Why ‘Republicans Are Winning the PR Battle Over Obamacare’.”
Michael Dorstewitz
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Forget the BC, of which an official non-computer generated raised-seal
copy which should exist STILL has not been and never will be produced;
because it doesn’t exist! A muslim-marxist-homosexual undocumented
illegal alien currently using a stolen SS# who by his own
autobiographical admission had foreign citizenship through his
biological Kenyan father AND foreign citizenship through his adoptive
Indonesian father (multiple dual-citizenships), was fraudulently and
unconstitutionally allowed by a complicit Congress, a compliant
judiciary a corrupt MSM, and by a thoroughly Govt.-dependent dumbed-down
electorate…to become “president”!! THAT WAS THE BIG LIE! The father
of all lies to follow, and all those who refer to him as the
“president” are the spawn of that LIE!! The LIE mothered by either
self-serving greed, political cowardice, fear of negroes rioting and PC
intimidation! The LIE that drew the line beyond which there is now no
return!! A LIE that cannot be fixed as the truth would unravel the false
reality of the past six years causing a cultural Armageddon and indict
us ALL, for perpetuating the LIE….and permitting it!
Talk-talk-talk-talk, nothing else can be done! It is too late! Turn out
the lights…the party’s over!
One could be mistaken for thinking the KGB have taken over the USA government, not really any difference from a USA gov moron and any stasi thug.
Hope and Change
YOU PEOPLE ARE JUST NUTS!
We now have a dictator
Yup!! Who couldn’t have seen THAT coming????? IRS, NSA, Benghazi, FF, etc., etc., etc.!!!! It’s going to be a LOOOOONG two years!!!!!!
Control the healthcare, control the banks, control the auto industry, reduce our military,now wants to control the press, are you kidding me? When are the American people going to stand up against this incompetent anti American so called president? He needs to be impeached for violating our constitution which he hates. We need to have a march on Washington demanding his resignation, or have a military coup to remove him and his socialist/communist appointees.
obma take a powder jus t get out u dumb fck
There hasn’t been freedom of the press. News is bought and paid for.
This will not happen and to answer the other questions about this administration. Yes they will leave office in 2016.