What were they thinking?

The FCC said they were backing off their investigation of America's newsrooms ... not because the MSM put up a fuss, but because the blogosphere, some at FOX News and Rush Limbaugh raised a fuss and that way many in the public heard about it.

So what were they thinking?  The government agency like the FCC does not commission a study for no reason.  the reason for this one is obvious: to establish the need for government control of editorial and news content in the media. To suggest otherwise it to insult our intelligence.

As for the MSM?  They stopped being a news gathering operation a long time ago.  Today they are simply political partisans on the side of the Left.  They are not worried about Team Obama imposing new rules on the media because they figure it will only affect those who oppose Obama's polices, and they're good with that.

Some in the media who bother to notice, like Howard Kurtz, wonder what they were thinking. I can't imagine that he's really asking that question because it's obvious. So he's pretending to be stupid.

The Anchoress has a good summary of the situation.

“What are they thinking?” Mr. Kurtz, it’s pretty obvious; they’re thinking no one in the mainstream press has asked them a difficult or challenging question in 7 years, so why would they start now.

They’re thinking an obsequious press that couldn’t be bothered to sustain outrage over intrusions into its own phone and internet records won’t have a problem with the government parking itself into the newsroom.

They’re thinking that if the mainstream press could forgive them for considering espionage charges against a member of the press — for doing what reporters are supposed to do — and then re-commence their habitual boot-licking, there is no real risk of media folk suddenly calling out a “red line”, or even being able to identify one.

They’re figuring that with this president, the mainstream media has no idea what “a bridge too far” might mean. Nor, “abuse of power”; nor “cover-up”; nor “mendacity”, “incompetence”, “ineptitude” or “constitutional illiteracy.”

They know that half the people in the newsroom are either married to (or social buddies with) influential members of this government, and that everyone is all comfy and nicely settled in for the revolution.

They know that the press willfully surrendered its own freedoms some time ago, in the interests of ideology, and so they really won’t mind a little editorial supervision from the masters:

What's surprising is that - with the supine acquiescence of the MSM, the FCC still backed down.  Barack Obama obviously needs to have a talk with his FCC Commissioner.