Mainstream Media: Seldom Right, Dependably Left

How has the increasingly marginalized demand for Internet regulations been dramatically amplified, despite the American people’s clear disapproval of just this kind of federal government overreach? You guessed it, the liberal media, who can always be depended upon to do whatever they can to promote and legitimize the latest bad idea coming from the left.

Armed with the freshest copy of the far left’s talking points, outlets like NPR, the Seattle Times and the Washington Post Business Section have concluded that the Internet will only be safe if the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates it under Title II of the Communications Act – designed for monopoly Bell telephone companies in the 1930s.

NPR recently ran a story on broadband policy and the leadership of FCC Chairman and Obama friend Julius Genachowski. Reporter Joel Rose interviewed two people for the story: a professor from the University of Pennsylvania, who reminded the FCC that “they have to adopt something that is enforceable,” and the president of Free Press, who warned about the end of “the Internet as we know it” and whined about how “terrified” Genachowski is of following Free Press’s reckless demands to regulate the Internet.

Quotes from Congressmen Henry Waxman and Jay Inslee, both liberal Democrats who openly support the FCC unilaterally – and probably illegally – imposing Title II regulations, were also included in the report.

What did NPR leave out? At no point did NPR’s Rose interview or quote one – not one – expert or advocate who opposes Internet regulations. Neither did he quote one member of the bipartisan majority in Congress who publicly opposes an FCC takeover and Title II regulations.

NPR – remember, their pledge drive starts next week! – is not the only media outlet taking this far-liberal position.

The Washington Post Business Section’s Rob Pegoraro believes that the regulation-free Internet we have enjoyed for so long is in imminent danger – from the very same companies that built the vast and efficient Internet services we know and love. The same companies that have consistently been investing in building, managing, and improving networks, even in a down economy, are justifiably worried about the effects of onerous new regulations on their industry.

In response to these rational concerns, Mr. Pegoraro glibly offers: “Well, the net-neutrality debate is one source of uncertainty the government can easily fix. The FCC can get it over with, follow the plan it unveiled in the spring and write a simple set of net-neutrality rules.” Only a committed leftist would ever assert that the cure for regulatory uncertainty is that a federal agency creates unprecedented regulations. But for those who get their economics lessons from the Media Marxists at Free Press, that’s the worldview.

As for Title II reclassification, the Post‘s Pegoraro parrots the Free Press talking points that the FCC “doesn’t require a permission slip from Congress” but that a “simple majority vote of the FCC’s five commissioners will do.”

Then there is Ryan Blethen, editorial page editor at the Seattle Times, who argues that the FCC must regulate the Internet simply because the FCC is a regulatory agency. According to Mr. Blethen, “The Federal Communications Commission needs to realize what it is: a regulatory agency. Once it grasps that simple concept it should do what regulatory agencies do: regulate.”

By that rationale, the IRS should initiate cripplingly expensive audits of every American who might conceivably be underpaying their taxes, and the Defense Department should start bombing the you-know-what out of foreign capitals suspected of supporting terrorism – because that’s what they do!

For those of us who believe there are proper constraints placed on administrative agencies by Congress and the Courts – both of which, incidentally, have told the FCC to stand down – Mr. Blethen is promoting a rather radical and reckless theory of American government.

Should we expect this kind of nonsense from a few far left Congressional Democrats? Sure.

Should we expect it from President Obama’s FCC Chairman, who reportedly “doesn’t get deeply into the details of telecom policy“? Certainly.

Should we expect it from the Marxist-founded, George Soros-funded “advocacy” organization Free Press? Of course.

But from the mainstream media, who to this day insist that they are objective, fact-driven professionals who have a properly adversarial relationship with the government? No. We deserve far better than that.

The lack of a thoughtful approach by these news organizations, who continue to push for a Big Government agenda, should remind us all why we need the alternative media – and why the mainstream media have lost so much trust and so many readers.