FCC push to regulate news draws fire
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) pushed back on Monday against a contention by a Democratic FCC commissioner that the government should create new regulations to promote diversity in news programming.
Barton was reacting to a proposal made last week by FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, who in a speech suggested that broadcasters be subject to a new "public values test" every four years.
"I hope … that you do not mean to suggest that it is the job of the federal government, through the [FCC], to determine the content that is available for Americans to consume,” Barton wrote Monday in a letter to Copps.
Copps had suggested that the test would make a broadcaster's license renewal contingent upon proof that they meet a prospective set of federal criteria.
He said outlets should be mandated to do the following: prove they have made a meaningful commitment to public affairs and news programming, prove they are committed to diversity programming (for instance, by showing that they depict women and minorities), report more to the government about which shows they plan to air, require greater disclosure about who funds political ads and devote 25 percent of their prime-time coverage to local news.
The regulations would apply to all news outlets operating on the public airwaves.
In his letter, Barton questioned whether Copps believes the government should reinstate the defunct Fairness Doctrine, a controversial standard that required broadcast licensees to offer "balanced" coverage. Critics saw it as an affront to free speech.
Barton also asked whether "five commissioners can do a better job of ensuring that Americans have access to a wide diversity of content and viewpoints than Americans can themselves by expressing their preferences ... in the vigorously competitive marketplace."
The Federal Communications Commission has an ongoing project about media diversity that promises to issue a report on whether Americans have access to adequate sources of news, but the effort has come under strong criticism and the FCC has not stated when the report will be released.
Obama FCC Proposals: Stalin and Mao Would be Proud
[ABOVE: Click images to enlarge]
OBAMA’S FREE SPEECH ASSAULT: COMING SOON TO AN INTERNET NEAR YOU!
The Obama administration has proposed another set of regulations that infringe upon Free Speech. DBKP has written about some of them previously.
* Next FCC Target: Hate Speech in the Media
* Obama, Free Speech: U.S. Votes for UN Restrictions on Free Speech
* Free Speech and the Internet Under Assault from Multiple Sources
Mark Hyman, American Spectator, lists a few of the most odious items in the coming FCC Internet Free Speech Assault. They are almost unbelieveable–almost.
From The Plan to Silence Dissent:
More than 150 bureaucrats at the Federal Communications Commission are in the final stages of planning how to deliver broadband Internet to the estimated 3-6 million people who do not have access. A formal plan will be unveiled in early 2010 but one proposal being discussed is deeply alarming as it threatens First Amendment freedoms.
The FCC is contemplating the notion that some or all of the electromagnetic spectrum occupied by radio and TV broadcasters is the perfect real estate to launch a national wireless broadband service. The price tag is $350 billion. That is as much as nearly $120,000 per person to be connected. Apparently, the FCC has not heard of the “$99 Triple Play.”
Nowhere are both the “heavy hand” and “invisible foot” of government more evident than in the many regulations being proposed for the last frontier of Free Speech: The Internet.
This administration has accepted the task of controlling disagreeable political speech with a zeal. Whether it was Regulation Czar, CASS SUNSTEIN’s ‘timely’ publication of the booklet “Rumors”–a screed that pimped for the necessary regulation of disagreeable “rumors” on the Internet–or these latest proposals from the Obama FCC, this White House doesn’t seem to miss a trick when it comes to stamping out dissent.
Especially, on that unregulated monster, the Internet.
Barack Obama soulmates, Stalin and Mao, would be proud.
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