Will a new Obama initiative put the FCC in newsrooms?

 We all like to complain about media bias, and I am just as guilty as the next, but the truth is that while the bias in the media is frustrating there really is nothing technically wrong with it, not is there anything unconstitutional with it. The Constitution guarantees a free media, which means they are free to their biases. I happen to think they are doing a disservice to the country, but that is just me.

  In fact media bias is nothing new and actually dates back to before we were a sovereign nation. Benjamin Franklin set up his own newspaper and created articles under pen names in order to oppose the King, while others set up papers in support of the King. People were free to pick and chose which newspapers they supported and which ones they did not. The same is true today, which is why I chose not to watch the news on ANY television network.

  But recently the Federal government has begun to pressure the media. This was evidenced first with this story that some leading Democrats in the Senate sent a letter to media outlets urging them to provide more coverage because they feel the media is not doing enough to promote the cap and trade agenda. Here is the money quote:

Sunday news shows are obviously important because they talk to millions of people, but they go beyond that by helping to define what the establishment considers to be important and what is often discussed during the rest of the week,” he said. [emphasis mine]

  In other words these Democrats want the media to help them define the issues the establishment wants them to promote. This is nothing if it is not an attempt by the establishment to partner with the media on issues near and dear to them, and I would call this propaganda.

  Now Ajit Pai, who is an FCC Commissioner, is making the claim that a new Obama initiative would place FCC monitors in newsrooms in order to study how news organizations determine which stories get reported and which ones do not.

But everyone should agree on this: The government has no place pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.

Unfortunately, the Federal Communications Commission, where I am a commissioner, does not agree. 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.”

How does the FCC plan to dig up all that information? First, the agency selected eight categories of “critical information” such as the “environment” and “economic opportunities,” that it believes local newscasters should cover. It plans to ask station managers, news directors, journalists, television anchors and on-air reporters to tell the government about their “news philosophy” and how the station ensures that the community gets critical information.

  This article has more:

The FCC awarded a contract for the study to a Maryland-based company called Social Solutions International. In April 2013, Social Solutions presented a proposal outlining a process by which contractors hired by the FCC would interview news editors, reporters, executives and other journalists.

“The purpose of these interviews is to ascertain the process by which stories are selected,” theSocial Solutions report said, adding that news organizations would be evaluated for “station priorities (for content, production quality, and populations served), perceived station bias, perceived percent of news dedicated to each of the eight CINs, and perceived responsiveness to underserved populations.”

  Defenders of this new initiative state that this is only a fact finding mission, but the question I have is this: what are they going to do with the facts they find? The reason I ask this question is because what good is having these facts if the Federal government is not going to use them? They want these facts for a reason. As the last article I linked to above states:

If the FCC goes forward, it’s not clear what will happen to news organizations that fall short of the new government standards. Perhaps they will be disciplined. Or perhaps the very threat of investigating their methods will nudge them into compliance with the administration’s journalistic agenda.

  And that is something which needs to be answered for I clearly remember Barack Obama once saying that some Americans are watching the wrong news outlets. Perhaps he is looking to correct that perceived problem.

  It could very well be that this is a benign fact finding mission, but do you trust the government not to abuse this information? I don’t…..