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Republican legislators, stop this Fed takeover of the newsrooms in it's tracks! They already control around 95% of Big Media. We are hedging toward 100% Pravda reporting! STOP BEING WIMPS!!

The FCC is launching a new study, taking upon itself the task of deciding what news the public “needs” to hear, versus the news the public wants to hear. The agency will conduct a “General Population Survey” that will “measure community members’ actual and perceived critical information needs.” Got that? What you think (perceive) you need to know is different from what the government says you need to know. Next, the FCC will send monitors to newsrooms across the country who will ask questions regarding the “philosophy” of the newsroom, inquire about possible conflicts between reporters and their bosses, and...

It appears, per Bud Norman, that with the exception of FOX News and the editorial pages of the Wall street Journal, the MSM really isn't bothered by the FCC's announcement that they're going to be checking up on what stories are being reported and how they are covered. Well, when your already the organ of the ruling party, that doesn't bother you. The Fox New Network is on the story, possibly because they’re the ones whose reporters have treated as criminal co-conspirators and excluded from the White House news pool and routinely criticized by every level of the administration, and...

News organizations often disagree about what Americans need to know. MSNBC, for example, apparently believes that traffic in Fort Lee, N.J., is the crisis of our time. Fox News, on the other hand, chooses to cover the September 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi more heavily than other networks. The American people, for their part, disagree about what they want to watch. 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...

February 20, 2014 New Obama initiative tramples First Amendment protections Byron York The First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…" But under the Obama administration, the Federal Communications Commission is planning to send government contractors into the nation's newsrooms to determine whether journalists are producing articles, television reports, Internet content, and commentary that meets the public's "critical information needs." Those "needs" will be defined by the administration, and news outlets that do not comply with the government's standards could face an uncertain future. It's hard to imagine a project more at...

A fiery Glenn Beck asserted Wednesday that the “fundamental transformation” of America has already occurred, and it is “time to forget the United States of America that you know.” “If this is what is [I am] required to pledge allegiance to, I am no longer a citizen of this country,” Beck said. “If I am required to pledge allegiance to that, I proudly declare now for my grandchildren’s ears, I am not a part of [it].” Beck was referring to then-candidate Barack Obama’s pledge that “we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America” with his...

The Federal Communications Commission said Wednesday it would again issue rules to prevent Internet service providers from blocking or slowing down access to content providers that don't pay a toll to reach consumers. snip Last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out FCC rules barring providers from blocking or slowing down websites, but it acknowledged the FCC has some authority to regulate broadband-company practices under a section of the 1996 Telecommunications Act that gives it broad authority to encourage U.S. broadband service. The FCC said Wednesday it won't appeal the D.C. Circuit's ruling....

An Obama administration plan that would get researchers into newsrooms across the country is sparking concern among congressional Republicans and conservative groups. The purpose of the proposed Federal Communications Commission study is to “identify and understand the critical information needs of the American public, with special emphasis on vulnerable-disadvantaged populations,” according to the agency. However, one agency commissioner, Ajit Pai, said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece Wednesday that the May 2013 proposal would allow researchers to “grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run.” He also said he feared the study might...

Free Speech » Matthew Clark » Docket Blog Why is the Obama Administration Putting Government Monitors in Newsrooms? The Obama Administration’s Federal Communication Commission (FCC) is poised to place government monitors in newsrooms across the country in an absurdly draconian attempt to intimidate and control the media. Before you dismiss this assertion as utterly preposterous (we all know how that turned out when the Tea Party complained that it was being targeted by the IRS), this bombshell of an accusation comes from an actual FCC Commissioner. FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai reveals a brand new Obama Administration program that he fears...

<p>First Amendment: The FCC has cooked up a plan to place "researchers" in U.S. newsrooms, supposedly to learn all about how editorial decisions are made. Any questions as to why the U.S. is falling in the free press rankings?</p> <p>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.</p>

Judge explains where it came from the white house- instructions to FCC. Freedom of the press is guaranteed in first amendment. Radical new era of tyranny in the white house Currently it is voluntary – Judge Nap says it would eventually change

A plan by the Federal Communications Commission to study how news organizations select stories has prompted about 10,000 people to sign a petition saying “no government monitors in newsrooms.” That’s according to the American Center for Law and Justice, which announced the petition Wednesday and said it reached that number within the first two hours. The agency announced a Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs last year, explaining that it wanted to understand the process of which stories are selected, station priorities, content production, populations served, perceived station bias, and perceived percent of news dedicated to each of the “critical...

The Obama Administration’s Federal Communication Commission (FCC) is poised to place government monitors in newsrooms across the country in an absurdly draconian attempt to intimidate and control the media. Before you dismiss this assertion as utterly preposterous (we all know how that turned out when the Tea Party complained that it was being targeted by the IRS), this bombshell of an accusation comes from an actual FCC Commissioner. FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai reveals a brand new Obama Administration program that he fears could be used in “pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.” As Commissioner Pai explains in the Wall...

“Everyone talks about the weather,” Mark Twain (apocryphally) observed, “but nobody does anything about it.” To some extent, the same is true about editorial bias. People have complained about bias in news coverage for decades, but only recently have the barriers to market entry been so low as to allow critics to build their own platforms to do anything about it. That frustration with editorial bias led in large part to the explosion of the blogosphere, which forced news outlets to deal substantively with the criticisms they created with their editorial biases.That is the free-market approach. Should there be a...

The Sudden Disappearance of The Popular Quinn and Rose Morning Talk show from Clean Channel's lineup this morning is troubling!!

In a continuing crackdown on the federal government's Lifeline program, sometimes known as "Obama phones," the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has revealed that fraud and abuse in the program exceeded two million subscribers. New rules were established after it became clear that subscribers and providers were taking advantage of the system:

The Federal Communications Commission is planning a broad probe of political speech across media platforms, an unprecedented move that raises serious First Amendment concerns. The FCC’s proposed “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” which is set to begin a field test in a single market with an eye toward a comprehensive study in 2014, would collect a remarkably wide range of information on demographics, point of view, news topic selection, management style and other factors in news organizations both in and out of the FCC’s traditional purview. The airwaves regulator would also subject news producers in all media to invasive...

Stardate 20021005.2128 (On Screen): As I think many of my readers know, I used to work for Qualcomm designing cell phones. Qualcomm is the company which invented CDMA, and made it practical, and made it into a market success, and it now dominates the American market, where Verizon and Sprint both use it. There are two other nationwide cellular systems: AT&T currently uses IS-136 TDMA, which is obsolete and has no upgrade path. Cingular uses GSM, a more sophisticated form of TDMA from Europe. And right now I'm basking in the evil glow of a major case of schadenfreude. The...

Demanding a change to the way business is done in Washington, President Barack Obama on Thursday urged lawmakers to ignore lobbyists, bloggers, "talking heads on radio" and "the professional activists who profit from conflict."

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) lost his battle against the new health-care law but he already has a new target in sight: the Federal Communications Commission. The tea party member late Wednesday blocked the confirmation of Tom Wheeler as chairman of the FCC, saying he wanted greater assurance from President Obama’s nominee that the agency wouldn’t require more funding disclosures for political TV ads. Cruz has said that such free speech should be protected. When asked about the issue in a June confirmation hearing, Wheeler demurred, saying he would study the issue.