Tag: FCC

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First Amendment rights media and media people national politics & policies too much government

Governing the News

FCC, censorship, covid, surveillance

“The Fairness Doctrine was controversial and led to lawsuits throughout the 1960s and ’70s that argued it infringed upon the freedom of the press,” explained FCC commissioner Ajit Pai for the Wall Street Journal, in an op-​ed I quoted yesterday.

“The FCC finally stopped enforcing the policy in 1987, acknowledging that it did not serve the public interest. In 2011 the agency officially took it off the books. But the demise of the Fairness Doctrine has not deterred proponents of newsroom policing.…”

Thankfully, this is old news. The former FCC commissioner’spiece was actually published nearly twelve years ago. Mr. Pai has since moved on to the private sector, in April becoming President and CEO of CTIA, the wireless industry trade association.

We can breathe a sigh of relief. The FCC is not planning on regulating the news for biased content.

Well, supposedly, anyway. 

So why rehash an old issue — why revive something from the proverbial slush pile?

To compare and contrast. Bias is a continuing problem, but the biggest threat to news reporting and dissemination since that time has revealed itself in a very different form, not as “abridgments” to press freedoms but as secret government commands and direction.

Remember what we learned in the Trump-​and-​pandemic years?

During the recent pandemic, and the release of the Twitter Files, we learned of a massive effort of government and “ex-​government” personnel directing social media outlets to platform-​censor dissent, going so far as to squelch new sources … as happened regarding the New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story.

The FCC Fairness Doctrine was nothing compared to the meddling that has more recently occurred behind the scenes, but which we all experienced, on social media. It played a role in the election results favoring Biden in 2020, and in the dysfunctional, disastrous public health response to COVID-19. 

The FCC doesn’t handle that level of biased manipulation of news.

So who does?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with Nano Banana and ChatGPT

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies too much government

The FCC’s Press Bias Fix

censorship, FCC, news, media, propaganda

You are operating a newsroom or, let’s say, a commentary room. Somebody accuses you of bias in how you decide what to publish.

You deflect: Of course different media organizations have different perspectives; each to its own. Sometimes, too, we choose what to run less rationally than the Platonic philosopher-​journalist would demand.

Bias is everywhere, inevitable.

Which makes the only cure maximal freedom of speech and openness of discourse. The answer to deficient speech is better speech, not either direct or indirect government censorship.

Nevertheless, the FCC has proposed to “investigate” the selection process of newsrooms.

Any such investigation is necessarily biased from the get-​go against freedom of speech and press. Even if it never gets to the regulation stage, the investigation itself constitutes interference. It is impossible for anyone being asked formal investigatory questions by the FCC to be unaware that the questioner has the power of government behind him.

How, for example, is a conscientious employee who respects the rights of his boss supposed to answer this loaded question: “Have you ever suggested coverage of what you consider a story with critical information for your customers that was rejected by management?”?

FCC commissioner Ajit Pai reports that this is one query being considered as part of a “Critical Information Needs” study to determine how stories are selected, “perceived bias,” and how responsive a newsroom is to “underserved populations.”

Pai, who opposes the project, says: “The government has no place pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.”

Or not covering others.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Popular too much government

Gloating Time?

net neutrality, censorship, control, FCC,

“The freak-​out was something to behold,” I wrote two years ago.

Newly appointed chair of Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, had just nixed ‘net neutrality,’ and reactions from the left end of the political spectrum were overwhelmingly negative.

I, on the other hand, prophesied good times ahead. But we free-​market folks were outshouted.

At least on Twitter. 

Now, two years later, with something like a free market returned to Internet regulation, Casey Given at the Washington Examiner urges us not to “forget how the Left cried wolf.”

Contrary to doomsayers — whose alarm was that, sans net neutrality, we would experience “the End of the Internet as We Know It” — things are turning out pretty well. Mr. Given tells us that “since the repeal of net neutrality, more than 6 million people have gained access to the internet. Internet speeds have increased as well.”

Which shouldn’t shock. After all, the whole net neutrality mania was fear-​based anti-​capitalist prejudice. 

“The Internet had stumbled along just fine until 2015, when President Barack Obama’s FCC put ‘net neutrality’ in place — a point Ajit Pai ably makes in his defense,” I argued two orbits ago. “Do the doom-​sayers really believe that a set of regulations that had been in place just a few years was going to ‘ruin the Internet’ and unleash Big Corporations upon the world to the detriment of regular consumers and start-​up service providers?”

What most net neutrality advocates wouldn’t acknowledge, at the time, was that net neutrality was supported by key telecom corporations. This should have given them a hint that net neutrality itself was the thing to be most feared: a rigged system for a few at the expense of the many.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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net neutrality, censorship, control, FCC,

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Accountability First Amendment rights general freedom local leaders media and media people

The Steps Beyond Argument

North Dakota’s junior U.S. Senator, Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, FCC, Rob Port, censorship, freedom of speech, 2nd Amendment

Rob Port’s job is to have an opinion. Opinions breed counter-​opinions. Unfortunately, they sometimes conjure up concerted campaigns to pressure opinion-​makers to shut up.

So, no surprise that his reporting — on his radio talk show and in print — on the doings and not-​doings of North Dakota’s junior U.S. Senator, Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, has riled up nasty “feedback.”

Earlier this month, Mike McFeely, a “left of center” columnist at the Fargo Forum, where Port also writes, published a column calling Port’s “obsession” with Heitkamp “suffocatingly limited and boring” and acknowledging, “I have often voiced my concerns about the one-​trick-​pony nature of Port to my bosses.”

Port notes that McFeely’s criticisms are based on subject matter, not content, and suggests that journalism doesn’t spend too much time holding politicians accountable.

It gets nastier, though. Senator Heitkamp’s brother, Joel, is also in the radio business, managing a competing station and hosting one of its morning programs. Mr. Heitkamp got his mitts on Mr. Port’s divorce papers and tweeted out, “The #FargoForum is paying him 71K for part time work! What do the full-​time employees get? #Wow #790KFGO #wishicould.”

Meanwhile, here comes the Senate Leadership Fund, associated with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑Ky.), to suggest the FCC remove Heitkamp’s station’s license due to his advocacy for his sister’s campaign.

Port, for his part, objects to the corrupt “help.”

“The FCC really has no grounds for getting involved,” he argues. “Free people should be allowed to speak freely.”

In the chaos of our current political battles, Rob Port stands on principle, offering equal freedom to his sleazy opponent.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* For the complete story, check out this weekend’s Townhall column, and the links at the column’s splash page.

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video

Video: Instead of Internet Neutrality

Big moves and much talk about net neutrality in recent days. If your head is swimming, maybe try these two videos from Reason TV:

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ideological culture too much government

Dead Doctrine

Take off your hat, crank up a dirge, and get out the shovel, for it’s time to put the last bit of dirt over the Fairness Doctrine. It’s dead.

The FCC killed it on Monday. Buried it.

“Our extensive efforts to eliminate outdated regulations,” explained FCC Chairman Julias Genachowski, “are rooted in our commitment to ensure that FCC rules and policies promote a healthy climate for private investment and job creation.”

A total of 83 regulations were deleted in the efficiency-​minded campaign.

And it’s nice to hear of it. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving … target.

Actually, it’s been a score of years since the old dinosaur of speech regulation “fell into desuetude,” as President Grover Cleveland might have put it. (Ol’ Grover was not exactly a punchy writer.) And hurray for its death and burial — let’s hope it shall not rise from its coffin, like Dracula in a cheap horror flick.

For the “Fairness Doctrine” was an attempt to regulate speech rather than let speech remain free. It  helped further solidify the two-​party system in America, and the very idea that there were only “two sides” to any political question … when it is obvious that a whole spectrum of possibilities exists for nearly any proposal or issue.

The Founding Fathers were right: Congress should “make no law” abridging the freedom of speech.

Interestingly, the regulation received its death blow not from Congress, but from the Federal Communications Commission.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.