Unbelieveable

I can't believe this is happening in my America.

I can't believe this is happening in the America my father, my father-in-law, and various uncles fought and bled for.

I can't believe every (alleged) journalist in this country hasn't risen in a body and howled in protest.

And yet this proposal is marching through the federal government's bureaucratic process on its way to becoming law, with nary a 'progressive' voice raised in protest.

As you read the following, keep this question in mind: what would have been the media's reaction if George Bush had proposed something like this?

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 ... does not agree. Last May the FCC proposed an initiative to thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country. With its "Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs," or CIN, the agency plans to send researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run...

The purpose of the CIN, according to the FCC, is to ferret out information from television and radio broadcasters about "the process by which stories are selected" and how often stations cover "critical information needs," along with "perceived station bias" and "perceived responsiveness to underserved populations."

How does the FCC plan to dig up all that information? ...the agency selected eight categories of "critical information" such as the "environment" and "economic opportunities," that it believes local newscasters should cover...

Who decides the "critical information" categories? The government, that's who.

Scary...

Should all stations follow MSNBC's example and cut away from a discussion with a former congresswoman about the National Security Agency's collection of phone records to offer live coverage of Justin Bieber's bond hearing?

In a sane world, the above sentence should be all that's necessary to yank MSNBC's FCC license.

More seriously, it is easy to imagine a scenario where the FCC rules that a network should cut away from hearings on things like the IRS targeting of conservative groups or the Benghazi coverup to focus on hearings on global warming.

It's obvious that this is nothing but a ham-handed attempt by the obama administration to intimidate and control the media.

I'm sure the mainstream media will push back and refuse to go along with this blatant violation of the First Amendment.

When pigs fly...