FCC: America's New Speech Police

I find it incredible in America that a regulatory agency thinks it has jurisdiction to probe an independent business. Oh, but I forget about Chrysler, GM, and our banking system. Foolish me. What the Federal Communications Commission is doing is outlandish and smacks of tyranny in the making. We should brace ourselves because the implications for free speech in America are grave. Your right to hear what you want to hear when you want to hear it is something our government doesn’t give a damn about. The free marketplace of ideas is something that is evil to them.

The FCC has announced it will probe Arbitron’s new audience measurement system for radio stations – it’s called the Portable People Meter. Arbitron is an independent company and the FCC has no jurisdiction over it. But, acting FCC Commissioner Michael Copps and his fellow Democrat Jonathan Adelstein disagree. Adelstein has been quoted as stating the commission has “clear authority” over broadcast signals, and “legitimate questions” to ask about Arbitron’s system, which relies on these signals, and operates as a currency for the industry.

At the heart of the controversy is conservative talk radio. Arbitron’s new PPM measurement system is showing that conservative talk is even more popular in the nation’s largest markets than previous measurements have shown while minority targeted stations are less popular. But, the PPM doesn’t lie. This is a pager-like device that the listener wears. It registers whatever radio station is being heard in real time and encodes that information into a data base. It is the most accurate means of measuring true listening habits ever devised.

But minority stations are crying foul and we have a government that grabs its ankles in our politically-correct American culture. Like many polling companies, Arbitron chooses its respondents based on landline access and minorities are claiming many in their ranks only use cellphones and are thereby disadvantaged and not fully represented in sampling statistics. The PPM Coalition made up of Black and Hispanic broadcasters issued an “emergency request” that the FCC investigate. Arbitron counters stating the Coalition’s petition is “replete with misstatements of acts, unsupported speculation and overheated rhetoric.” And, Arbitron says a number of stations that target minority audiences have in fact increased their market rankings since introduction of the PPM.

We’ll see how this plays out, but there is no argument that government now sees itself as the arbiter of what we choose to hear. Government has truly become Big Brother in America. The FCC is out of bounds on this probe and we can only hope the court system will prevail in what will surely wind up as a key fight for free speech rights in America. Tommy Smothers once said, “The only valid censorship is the right of the people not to listen.” It would seem the Federal Censorship Commission disagrees.

Brian Jennings is a longtime national radio programmer and author of Censorship: The Threat to Silence Talk Radio.