FCC to declare news illegal!

George Orwell was far too accurate in predicting events to come as governments became too knowing, too powerful and too arrogant to care any longer about anything except absolute power. Big brother is not only watching but listening, recording, monitoring and most importantly cataloging every thing it possibly can about as many people it can. And the train is running faster with each passing day. That smell? That would be the American Constitution in flames and your liberty being burned at the stake.

Orwell’s only mistake was that he called his famous book 1984 instead of 2014. Ayn Rand demonstrated similar genius in the mid 1950’s with her masterpiece Atlas Shrugged. She too was a seer when it came to the ultimate corruption of governments when they run unchecked.

Today in the United States (it could never happen in America) we have the Internal Revenue Service targeting the political opponents of the President, the National Security Administration monitoring every single citizen and now the Federal Communications Commission establishing guidelines so that we the people can get the news we actually need and not the news we ‘perceive’ we need. You read that right. The FCC is launching a new ‘study’ to determine what news the public “needs” to hear as opposed what the public wants to hear. The agency will conduct a ‘General Population Survey’ that will in part “measure community members actual and perceived critical information needs.”

You see the government knows what you need to know. You are clearly misguided if you think you know what you want to hear, or read or see.

In the next phase the FCC will be sending ‘researchers’ into America’s newsrooms to find out how and why stories are covered. For real! I really wish I was making this up but the old axiom of truth is stranger than fiction applies as I have never seen before. Each newsroom will have it’s ‘philosophy’ evaluated and reviewed to make sure vulnerable and disadvantaged (as determined by the government) populations are fairly treated.

In fact in the report outlining the project Social Solutions International, Inc has this gem in it’s first paragraph:

Social Solutions has been tasked with the development of a research design that can be used to identify and understand the ‘critical information needs’ (CINs) of the American public.

There you have it in black and white. Simple to the point and as scary as anything I’ve ever read. The government will determine what your ‘critical information needs’ are because you are simply too stupid to figure it out for yourself. Actually Obama and his Fascist friends know you are in fact bright enough to figure things out for yourself so they will just decide what information you are allowed to consume. The list of priorities puts Global Warming near the top and war coverage gets almost no mention. And you thought this wasn’t too serious. I’ll bet you’re having a change of heart.

How about another excerpt from the outline of placing the thought police deep inside the newsrooms of America:

Overall Project Goals and Objectives

We understand that the purpose of this Study of Critical Information Needs (CINs) is to provide a comprehensive analysis of access/barriers to CINs in diverse American communities.

The objectives of the study are to: 

• collect data to inform:

- the access (or potential barriers) to CINs as identified by the FCC;

- the media that makes up media ecologies (i.e., what media is actually included in that ecology; ownership of that market; what specific type of content dominates those media ecologies; what is the flow of information within the ecology, etc);

- the use of and interaction between media that makes media ecologies (i.e., how do different layers of the ecology interact to provide for CINs; how do individuals of diverse neighborhoods/communities differ in terms of access to CINs);

• validate data collection tools/templates and protocols; 
• demonstrate high internal validity and reliability of measured constructs

The language alone is enough to send a chill up your back. Media ecologies... controlling the flow of information within the ecology? I think I need a drink. Brown liquor at that. How utterly un PC of me!

Fortunately last week, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, who believes the government is clearly out of bounds and has no role in determining what my ‘critical information need’ is sounded the alarm in the Wall Street Journal.

In part Pai wrote the following:

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. A field test in Columbia, S.C., is scheduled to begin this spring.

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."

This is all the latest incarnation of the so called Fairness Doctrine that was advanced by the Radical Progressives a few years ago to combat their failings in competing with conservative talk radio. The cried then that if a Conservative had the microphone for three hours then a Liberal needed the mic for three hours as well. Unfortunately that was tried and it was called Air America. That dismal attempt to listen to Chicken Little humorless lefties died a quiet and quite deserved death after only a short time on the air.

But my friends make no mistake the thought police will never give up and never surrender. They truly believe they know what is best for everyone. They really believe they are smarter than you or I or anyone else for that matter. They will be back.

You have been warned again!