FCC Adviser Backs ‘Public Media’ as ‘Filter’ and ‘Megaphone’ for Govt-Funded Internet Journalism

In a CNSNews article, Matt Cover explains how the push at the FCC

“is an advocate for a “public media” that could serve as a “filter” and a “megaphone” for a network of government-funded journalists competing with other, non-government-backed rep.

Finally, some government transparency. Its easy to see that this will be the propaganda platform for team Obama with official backing and funded by tax payers. don’t we already have NPR for this stuff? Ellen Goodman, a leftist columnist, is the academic adviser that carefully chooses the words to hide in plain site.

The article goes on:

“The Federal Communications Commission’s broadband workshops and several recent reports have documented national deficits in both the communications infrastructure and the narrative content necessary to involve the entire population in democratic decision making or to foster widespread economic and social flourishing,” Goodman and University of Pennsylvania Research Fellow Anne Chen write in the official comments.

National deficits in narrative? That means not enough outlets to spew the agenda rhetoric of the left. This is the back door attack on the media. When coupled with what the FCC has planned to control the internet distribution of information, all this really comes down to controlling the voices on the internet. In a recent article by Steve Forbes called Could a Chavez-Style Media Crackdown Be Coming Our Way? he writes of other disturbing influence at the FCC:

The chief proponent of this thinking – which amounts to an unprecedented government intrusion into our own country’s media — is Professor Robert McChesney, founder of the Orwellian-named Free Press, one of the most influential organizations in the growing “media reform” movement on the far-left.

Free Press’ curious stance on media reform can best be summed up by McChesney who suggests that, “Any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself.”

Such radical hyperbole coming from the founder of a group called “Free Press” drips with irony. But it’s a rhetorical flourish that Dr. McChesney is apparently quite comfortable with. He has employed it repeatedly to argue that his version of media reform is the first step in the struggle to remake American society in a socialistic fashion. In his attack on the existing media “power structure” in the U.S., he calls for a “class struggle from below…In the end there is no real answer but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles.”

If any of this sounds eerily familiar, it should. It’s right out of Hugo Chavez’s playbook. Like Chavez, Free Press’ call for “media reform” harkens back to a bygone era when the radical left’s doctrinarian opposition to a genuinely free press was rooted in the totalitarian political theories of Marx, Lenin, Hitler and others.

All of this could be ignored as the comical rantings of a loony leftist professor safely ensconced in the tenured halls of academia, were it not for Free Press’ astonishing — and growing — influence on policymaking within the current administration and Congress.

As hard as it may be to believe, McChesney and his indefatigable band of media revolutionaries are being taken seriously by some policymakers in Washington. They are granted regular audiences with those overseeing our nation’s media policy at the FCC and FTC, and meeting regularly with members of Congress.

Now we get the picture. The FCC is quietly planning the implementation of the government takeover of all media including the internet to silence dissent and be able to force feed the leftist socialist agenda to the unsuspecting public using their own tax money. We warned of this early in the Obama administration when the Chavez sympathizer Mark Lloyd wa appointed by Obama as ‘diversity czar’ at the FCC. In an article in the Washington Times Amanda Carpenter writes about Mark Lloyd:

President Obama’s diversity czar at the Federal Communications Commission has spoken publicly of getting white media executives to “step down” in favor of minorities, prescribed policies to make liberal talk radio more successful, and described Hugo Chavez’s rise to power in Venezuela “an incredible revolution.”

Mark Lloyd’s provocative comments – most made during a tenure at the liberal Center for American Progress think tank – are giving fodder to critics who say Mr. Obama has appointed too many “czars” to government positions that don’t require congressional approval. They are also worrying to some conservatives who fear the FCC might use its powers to remove their competitive advantage on talk radio and television.

Many of the remarks have been unearthed by conservative-leaning writers and bloggers and discussed on cable television amid a broader critique of Mr. Obama’s penchant for czars that exploded with the ouster this month of “green jobs czar” Van Jones.

In one of his more eye-opening comments, Mr. Lloyd praised Mr. Chavez during a June 2008 conference on media reform, saying the authoritarian Venezuelan president had led “really an incredible revolution – a democratic revolution.”

Neil Stevens at REDSTATE explains how the FCC push for “Net Neutrality” is really a takeover of the internet and will allow the control of who gets what information. He writes:

However Genachowski and the Obama FCC are placing these kinds of sensible cost-cutting and efficiency-gaining innovations in jeopardy with their talk of heavy-handed government regulation of the industry. The Internet has flourished since it came out from the thumb of government control when it was the ARPAnet, and became the free-wheeling marketplace it is today. Clearly, that scares people who want government to be in control of things.

And it’s total control they want, too. Because the second principle Genachowski asked for, “transparency,” doesn’t mean transparency of government. No, it means that the government is to claim the right to have access to every router in America, every switch, and every other piece of hardware that makes the Internet go. Public or Private, the FCC wants to be able to snoop on how it runs, to be able to control how it runs.

Does that scare you? It should. When you connect to the Internet, your home computer network (even if it’s just one computer) is now on the Internet. The Internet is not like a public road. It’s a vast series of private networks, all connected together. Government wants control over the whole ball of yarn, how everyone configures and runs their own private computers routing the packets of the Internet.

That control will have one immediate impact: The FCC will be picking winners and losers on the Internet, which is why Google is 100% behind this effort. Google will be a winner, thanks in no small part to its close ties with the Obama administration through Google CEO and Obama advisor Eric Schmidt, while those who invest in the capital of the Internet, the wires that criss-cross the country and the planet, will lose. If you look at any of the literature put out by the pro-Net Neutrality forces, you’ll see plenty of villification of ISPs, AT&T in particular.

The CNSNews article goes on to show what the goals are as stated by Ms. Goodman:

“We have identified three core functions of digital public media, based on the directives of the Public Broadcasting Act and research on best practices in the field,” she says.  “These functions are (1) to create content – particularly narratives in the form of journalism, long-form documentaries, oral histories, and cultural exploration – that markets will not and that is important to individual and social flourishing; (2) to curate content, serving as both a filter to reduce information overload and a megaphone to give voice to the unheard; and (3) to connect individuals to information and to each other in service of important public purposes.”

Public media is necessary, she says, because while information is “abundant” today, “wisdom and knowledge remain hard won.”

1. Create content – That is the government deciding what you get to see and hear.  2.  To serve as both ‘filter’ and ‘megaphone’ -obvious 3.  To connect individuals with information – That is the force feeding part -indoctrination with tax dollars.

She goes on:

To give the public more “wisdom and knowledge” Goodman argues that the government must sponsor public media content, especially journalism, in areas “where there are market failures.”

“Public media should create content where there are market failures in accordance with a public service objective,” she says in her comment.  “Public media contributions are especially needed in the areas of enterprise journalism (particularly at the local level), educational content, and content that illuminates issues of particular relevance to minority and underserved audiences.”

So will this be the new ACORN stations? SEIU propaganda channel? The Organizing for America (Obama’s army) voice of revolution? Count on it.

Read the rest of the CNSNews.com article HERE

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