LEFTIES ALWAYS WANT TO SILENCE THEIR POLITICAL OPPONENTS: Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren Want the FCC to Revoke Sinclair’s Broadcast Licenses. For the crime of broadcasting-while-conservative.

FCC Chair Ajit Pai responds to demand for press censorship:

Dear Senator Cantwell:

Thank you for your letter requesting that the Commission investigate a broadcaster based on the content of its news coverage and promotion of that coverage. In light of my commitment to protecting the First Amendment and freedom of the press, I must respectfully decline.

A free media is vital to our democracy. That is why during my time at the Commission I have consistently opposed any effort to infringe upon the freedom of the press and have fought to eliminate regulations that impede the gathering and dissemination of news. Most relevant here, I have repeatedly made clear that the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content of a particular newscast.

I understand that you disliked or disagreed with the content of particular broadcasts, but I can hardly think of an action more chilling of free speech than the federal government investigating a broadcast station because of disagreement with its news coverage or promotion of that coverage. Instead, I agree with Senator Markey that "[a]ny insinuation that elected officials could use the levers of government to control or sensor [sic] the news media would represent a startling degradation of the freedom of the press." I also take this opportunity to reaffirm the commitment I made to several members of the Senate Commerce Committee last year that the Commission under my leadership would "not act in a manner that violates the First Amendment and stifles or penalizes free speech by electronic media, directly or indirectly."

Thank you for your interest, and let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Ajit V. Pai

Read the whole thing.

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.

A Friendly Visit From the FCC

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 the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page and the radio talk shows have been paying some attention for obvious reasons of their own, but otherwise the story has gone largely unnoted. In our years of journalism we endured many a journalist’s self-righteous sermon about the obligation of the press to bravely resist any governmental interference, but that was mostly during Republican administrations, when nothing like the FCC’s current curiosity and the nation’s slide down the rankings of press freedom ever occurred, and at this moment of hope and change none of the over-the-air networks seem terribly concerned that their notions of the news consumers’ critical information needs will differ much from the government’s.

If proof is needed that the MSM is composed of Democrats with bylines, this is all the proof you really need. A watchdog doesn't growl at his master.