We Don't Want the Government Violating Newsrooms, Political Speech or the Internet

 Seton Motley, Contributing Author: This past week a long-existing pernicious problem finally broke through to wider attention - thanks in large part to a two-weeks-ago editorial by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Ajit Pai.
The FCC Wades Into the Newsroom

Why is the agency studying 'perceived station bias' and asking about coverage choices?An excellent question – what with the First Amendment saying what it says.Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of…the press....What exactly did the FCC have planned?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. Outstanding. Actually, the President Barack Obama FCC telegraphed just this sort of thing when it in 2009 hired as their inaugural “Chief Diversity Officer” a man by the name of Mark Lloyd.

• Opposes virtually any private ownership of media.
• Disciple of Saul Alinsky’s tactics for revolutionary social change.
• Was a senior fellow at John Podesta’s Center for American Progress.
• Served as a consultant to…George Soros’s Open Society Institute....
• New FCC 'Chief Diversity Officer' Co-Wrote Liberal Group's 'Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio'
• Audio: FCC’s Diversity Czar: ‘White People’ Need to be Forced to ‘Step Down’ ‘So Someone Else Can Have Power’
• Video: FCC ‘Diversity Czar’ on Chavez’s Venezuela: ‘Incredible…Democratic Revolution’

And let’s not forget President Obama’s Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan - who in 1996 wrote:
Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment DoctrineIn which she said that "redistribution of speech" is not "itself an illegitimate end" for government. Thank goodness she’s the last line of First Amendment defense.

Thankfully, the broader attention paid to the FCC’s egregious newsroom overreach led to this:
FCC Throws In the Towel on Explosive Content StudyFCC Chairman Tom Wheeler - a recent President Obama appointee - seems to have missed the point. From his official statement announcing the towel-in-throwing:Chairman Wheeler agreed that survey questions in the study directed toward media outlet managers, news directors, and reporters overstepped the bounds of what is required.What is required - by the Constitution - is that the government do absolutely nothing with anything having to do with the media.

This fiasco certainly sounds familiar.
Phone Records of (Associated Press) Journalists Seized by U.S.

Obama Administration Spied on Fox News Reporter James RosenThese fiascos sound familiar.20 Questions the IRS Asked Conservative Groups

10 Crazy Things the IRS Asked Tea Party Groups

The 55 Questions the IRS Asked One Tea Party Group After More Than Two Years of Waiting – Including Demands for Names of All Its Donors and VolunteersYou think the FCC newsroom invasion would have been fair and balanced?IRS Approved Liberal Groups While Tea Party in LimboYou think the FCC is finished with their project?Remember the IRS Tea-Party Scandal? Get Ready for Round Two

Obama isn’t talking about it, but his administration might restrain the activities of advocacy groups, including ones the IRS targeted last year.When the FCC in 2007 imposed Network Neutrality, this happened:Court: FCC Has No Power to Regulate Net NeutralityDid that stop them? Of course not.FCC (Again) Approves Controversial ‘Net Neutrality’ RulesWhich led to this last month:D.C. Circuit Overturns FCC’s Net Neutrality OrderDid THAT stop them? Of course not. Just last week, we had this:FCC Chairman Proposes New Net Neutrality RulesWhy is the Left so adamant about Net Neutrality? Self-avowed Marxist and college professor (please pardon the redundancy) Robert McChesney explains:“(T)he ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”How very Hugo Chavez of them.

This would leave the government as our sole Internet Service Provider (ISP). So who will they then favor with bandwidth? Conservative and Tea Party sites – or Daily Kos and The Nation?

Given what the government’s doing with the IRS – and what it is already trying to do with the FCC – this is not a difficult question to answer.

Net Neutrality is an assault on the private sector to effect an ideological outcome. It is a free market problem – that soon begets a free speech problem.

Which is why the Left is so insistent on its illegal imposition.

Which is why we can not allow them to do it.
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Seton Motley is the President of Less Government and he contributes to ARRA News Service. Human Events also published this article. Please feel free to follow him on Twitter - Facebook.

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