UPDATED below
The Fairness Doctrine officially died in 2011, years after the FCC stopped enforcing it on broadcast and cable news in 1987. Comes now the Son-of-Fairness, the Critical Information Needs survey of television and radio newsrooms and, incredibly, newspapers as well. Says dissenting FCC commissioner Ajit Pai:
“…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 claims that its survey is about ensuring that communication industry barriers for entrepreneurs and small businesses are eliminated.
“This claim is peculiar,” says Pai. “How can the news judgments made by editors and station managers impede small businesses from entering the broadcast industry? And why does the CIN study include newspapers when the FCC has no authority to regulate print media?”
Instapundit opines: “You might say they’ll regret this when a Republican is in the White House, but I think this is about making sure that never happens.”
Wiretapping the Associated Press and seizing phone records of a Fox News reporter apparently weren’t enough for the Democrats. They’re going to be proactive now.
UPDATE: A radio talker fires back. And the Democrat feds may back off.
MORE: This from Fox News on Feb. 21: “FCC spokeswoman Shannon Gilson said Chairman Tom Wheeler agreed with critics that some of the study’s proposed questions for reporters and news directors ‘overstepped the bounds of what is required.’
“The agency announced that a proposed pilot study in South Carolina will now be shelved, at least until a ‘new study design’ is finalized. But the agency made clear that this and any future studies will not involve interviews with ‘media owners, news directors or reporters.’
“Commissioner Ajit Pai, who was one of the staunchest critics of the proposal, heralded the decision Friday as an acknowledgement that government-backed researchers would not be dispatched into newsrooms, as feared.
“This study would have thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country, somewhere it just doesn’t belong,” he said in a statement. “The Commission has now recognized that no study by the federal government, now or in the future, should involve asking questions to media owners, news directors, or reporters about their practices. This is an important victory for the First Amendment.”
The feds have a way of backtracking once the furor dies down. Wait and see.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 