FBI to hire firm to monitor news reports about the agency

  According to this story the FBI has hired a firm to monitor and rate news stories which are run about the agency. Here is more:

The FBI is hiring a contractor to grade news stories about the agency as “positive” “neutral” or “negative,” but the agency won’t say why officials need the information or what they plan to do with it.

FBI officials wouldn’t even reveal how they will go about assigning the grades, which were laid out in a recent contract solicitation. The contract tells potential bidders to “use their judgment” in scoring news coverage as part of a new “daily news briefing” service the agency is seeking as part of a contract that could last up to five years.

  As you can see above the FBI is not saying what the agency intends to do with this information. It could simply be an attempt to monitor opinion on the agency in order to use that information to improve public relations but could there be more to this? Could the FBI use this information to intimidate news outlets?

    That is not beyond the realm of possibility in my opinion when you take into account that this is not the first time it has been suggested the media needs to be monitored.

  America’s Watchtower wrote about an Obama initiative which would put the FCC in newsrooms back in February:

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.

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,” the Social 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.”

  And before that some Democrats, who were upset at the lack of global warming coverage, began to pressure the mianstream media to dedicate more coverage to global warming.

  Here is more:

According to Sanders, “It is beyond my comprehension… that their shows have discussed climate change in 2012, collectively, for all of eight minutes.” Sanders is using liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America as his source. MMfA’s data indicates that, in 2009, the Sunday shows covered climate change topics for over an hour, and in 2012, Sunday show coverage dropped to less than eight minutes on climate change.

Sanders and his colleagues plan to send the letter because, according to Sanders, Sunday TV coverage is not proportional to the gravity of the situation. “What [the networks] are saying is, climate change is a non-important issue, it is an irrelevant issue, and yet the scientific community tells us that it is the greatest crisis facing this planet,” he said.

    When taken singly it could be said that there is nothing to see here but when looked at collectively is sure looks as though the Obama regime, the Federal government, and various agencies are looking to influence how the media portrays them. 

  While conservatives like to complain about media bias, and I am as guilty as the next, there is nothing wrong with it and there is nothing unconstitutional about it. The first amendment guarantees a free press it does not guarantee a fair press and that is a huge distinction which cannot be ignored.

  It may be frustrating at times but the press is not there to be fair and balanced. In fact this is nothing new; before the United States was free and independent from Britain people such as Benjamin Franklin set up newspapers and wrote articles under pen names in order to oppose the King.

  There has always been a bias in the press promoting one position or another. That is simply what the term “free press” means and we can make a decision on which media outlets to follow and which ones to ignore. That is the beauty of the Constitution.

  But apparently not everybody feels the same way if we are to take a look at these stories; it would appear as if the Obama regime is looking to gain control over the media through intimidation. (And lest we forget, on a different note, the CIA recently admitted to spying on the Senate.)

  There could be nothing to this story whatsoever but it bears watching closely…