After backlash (mostly from conservatives and Fox News), the FCC is backing off it’s plan to spy on newsrooms and dictate what they put on the news.
I think the Obama FCC will bring this back right after the mid-term elections. When Obama is officially a lame duck after the elections, his power grabs will grow far worse than they are now.
The Federal Communications Commission announced Friday that it was putting on hold a controversial study of American newsrooms, after complaints from Republican lawmakers and media groups that the project was too intrusive.
FCC spokeswoman Shannon Gilson said Chairman Tom Wheeler agreed with critics that some of the study’s proposed questions for reporters and news directors “overstepped the bounds of what is required.”
The agency announced that a proposed pilot study in South Carolina will now be shelved, at least until a “new study design” is finalized. But the agency made clear that this and any future studies will not involve interviews with “media owners, news directors or reporters.”
Commissioner Ajit Pai, who was one of the staunchest critics of the proposal, heralded the decision Friday as an acknowledgement that government-backed researchers would not be dispatched into newsrooms, as feared.
The contract for the study had gone to Maryland-based firm Social Solutions International, whose background largely focuses on public health and not media. Republican lawmakers first complained about the potential course of the study in December. Pai raised additional concerns in a Wall Street Journal column earlier this month.