GOP says FCC study violated freedom of the press
Texas Insider Report: WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Federal Communications Commission is quietly changing course on a controversial study after parts of its methodology were roundly criticized by GOP lawmakers and FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai for encroaching into editorial decisions and content at TV stations. “The government has no place pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories,” wrote FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai (left) in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed earlier this week.
As Commissioner Pai described it, the FCC would be sending in researchers to “grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run.”
The Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs, which aimed to help the commission figure out how to lower entry barriers for minorities in broadcasting, may now be on hold. At the very least, the controversial 
sections of the study will be revisited under new FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and incorporated into a new draft.
Regardless of the study’s intent, it’s hard to fathom why the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sent its minions into newsrooms of the stations it licenses to ask questions about how stations exercise their 1st Amendment right.
Industry experts had been at a loss, especially in today’s age of media abundance, as to why the Obama Administration’s FCC sought to expand part of its job is to ensure that the media – in this case, even the print media which it does not directly regulate – covered certain issues sufficiently, and in a balanced way.
The Commission responded, saying the study is merely an objective fact-finding mission. The results will inform a report that the FCC must submit to Congress every three years on eliminating barriers to entry for entrepreneurs and small businesses in the communications industry.
But, said Commissioner Pai in his Op-Ed:
“This claim is peculiar. How can the news judgments made by editors and station managers impede small businesses from entering the broadcast industry? And why does the CIN study include newspapers when the FCC has no authority to regulate print media?”
The history of the FCC shows its studies are often little more than a prelude to expanding or implement new regulatory guidelines.
This is not the first time the agency has meddled in news coverage. Before Critical Information Needs, there was the FCC’s now-defunct Fairness Doctrine, which began in 1949 and required equal time for contrasting viewpoints on controversial issues. Though the Fairness Doctrine ostensibly aimed to increase the diversity of thought on the airwaves, many stations simply chose to ignore controversial topics altogether, rather than air unwanted content that might cause listeners to change the channel.
The Fairness Doctrine was controversial and led to lawsuits throughout the 1960s and ’70s that argued it infringed upon the freedom of the press.
The FCC finally stopped enforcing the policy in 1987, acknowledging that it did not serve the public interest. In 2011 the agency officially took it off the books. But the demise of the Fairness Doctrine has not deterred proponents of newsroom policing, and the CIN study is a first step down the same dangerous path.
GOP leadership on the House Commerce Committee, which accused the FCC of using to the study as a veiled attempt to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, were expecting answers to their letter on Jan. 10.
Sources said that the FCC asked for more time to respond.
An FCC representative said the agency “has no intention of interfering in the coverage and editorial choices that journalists make. We’re closely reviewing the proposed research design to determine if an alternative approach is merited.”
