Americans are accustomed to hearing about ham-handed tactics to control news organizations in other parts of the world. Right-wing dictators watching their support eroding, leftist populists with economies in trouble and incompetents of all stripes routinely go in for that sort of thing, typically when the truth gets hard to take.
News of similar stunts from our own government is a little more rare. And that is all the more reason to take them seriously. We can never allow ourselves to assume such things could not happen here. They can and they will.
Ajit Pai’s Feb. 10 Wall Street Journal piece on the Federal Communications Commission’s attempt to institute a “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs” is a reminder of just that. Pai, a Republican appointed to serve as an FCC commissioner by President Barack Obama, says the purpose would be to look into how newsrooms across the country choose what stories to cover and how. Much of the focus would be on “perceived station bias” and “perceived responsiveness to underserved populations.”
Toward that end, the agency picked eight areas of “critical information” it seems to think news bureaus should cover. Included were topics such as the “environment” and “economic opportunities.” Under this plan, the FCC would then interview newsroom workers with specific questions delving into more detailed aspects of the operations. Editors and newscasters might be asked to explain their “news philosophy,” while reporters could be asked, for example, if they had “ever suggested coverage of what you consider a story with critical information for your customers that was rejected by management?”
Perhaps the most striking aspect of this proposed study is the underlying foundation of presumptions. What if an editor rejects the “suggested coverage” offered by a reporter? Does that reflect evidence of bias, neglect of “critical information” or just news judgment? To whose idea of “news philosophy” should a broadcaster conform? Who says any of that is a matter for FCC regulation? And who said the FCC has anything to say about how a newspaper is run?
The FCC regulates the nation’s airwaves, primarily acting as a traffic cop to protect bandwidth from interference. While it did have more parental functions limiting language and behavior (and still gets involved in the occasional televised “wardrobe malfunction”), those concerns are rapidly falling by the wayside as more and more entertainment moves away from broadcast toward cable and the Internet.
Even the famous Fairness Rule, which required equal time for controversial positions, was abandoned as archaic. Too many small towns and remote areas now have access to a number of news sources representing diverse views, to worry about monopolizing opinion.
In any case, the FCC has never had jurisdiction over the print media in any way. Yet, as Pai made clear in his Journal piece, the FCC had every intention of sending its monitors into newspaper newsrooms as well as those of broadcast journalists.
With radio and television broadcasters, the FCC has great power – particularly through regulation and licensing. That is not true of print publications, which need no permission to publish per se.
But winning the court case is not the same as not being pestered to begin with. And should the FCC choose to, it could certainly make life miserable, costly or at least inconvenient, for most news organizations.
That is wrong – it is wrong in Caracas, Venezuela, in Cuba and it is wrong in the United States. As Pai put it: “Government does not have a place in the newsroom.” And it is up to all of us, here and everywhere, constantly to remind it of that.
