OpinionPolitics

Who needs a free press? Obama FCC to police newsrooms with ‘researchers’

ObotsIn North Korea, they’re called “minders,” just as they were in the former Soviet Union.  The Obama administration, however, calls them “researchers,” and they’re set to be placed in newsrooms across the country supposedly to learn how editorial decisions are made.  Right.

A post at the Investor’s Business Daily described the situation perfectly:

As if illegal seizures of Associated Press phone records and the shadowy tailing of the mother of a Fox News reporter weren’t menacing enough, the Obama administration is going out of its way to institute a new intrusive surveillance of the press, as if the press wasn’t supine enough.

In an op-ed at the Wall Street Journal, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai warned that a plan to dispatch so-called “researchers” into radio, television and even newspaper newsrooms called the “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs” is still going forward, despite the grave danger it presented to the First Amendment.

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

Investor’s added:

Pai warned that under the rationale of increasing minority representation in newsrooms, the FCC, which has the power to issue or not issue broadcasting licenses, would dispatch its “researchers” to newsrooms across America to seek their “voluntary” compliance about how news stories are decided, as well as “wade into office politics” looking for angry reporters whose story ideas were rejected as evidence of a shutout of minority views.

So the FCC is set to examine office politics at newsrooms across America now.  Why?

Investor’s said the idea is “a recrudescence of the Fairness Doctrine,” something that was once used to ensure liberal ideas got equal time, but was later scrapped.  Liberals, however, have sought to revive the policy to silence conservatives like Rush Limbaugh.

“It’s an idea so fraught with potential for abuse it ought to have news agencies screaming bloody murder. The very idea of Obama hipsters showing up in newsrooms, asking questions and judging if newspapers (over which they have no jurisdiction), radio and TV are sufficiently diverse is nothing short of thought control,” Investor’s said.

The article concludes:

But abuse and control is the Obama way.  It’s also the way liberals operate.  The idea that a news organization may allow a point of view to the right of Josef Stalin is horrifying to the left.

Why do you think liberals always attack Fox News?  Or Rush Limbaugh?  Or any other conservative voice?

The answer is clear.

Aside from their native language, there really is no difference between modern American liberal progressives and the Communists who ran the former Soviet Union.

And the only way they can mold and shape public opinion the way they want is to silence any dissent.

No wonder the U.S. is now ranked 46th in press freedom, having dropped 13 places over the last year.

Related:

Joe Newby

A 10-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Joe ran for a city council position in Riverside, Calif., in 1991 and managed successful campaigns for the Idaho state legislature. Co-author of "Banned: How Facebook enables militant Islamic jihad," Joe wrote for Examiner.com from 2010 until it closed in 2016 and his work has been published at Newsbusters, Spokane Faith and Values and other sites. He now runs the Conservative Firing Line.

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