Hey, you know what’s a pain in the rump for the ruling class? That pesky “freedom of the press,” that’s what. Reporters can investigate whatever they want, and then they can just go ahead and put those reports on the air. That means that someone might discover the horrible things politicians are doing, and they might even decide to run the story.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal bringing people’s attention to this study, saying “the government has no place pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.” And while participation is technically voluntary, ignoring them would not be a wise decision for any news outlet that wants an FCC license.

An FCC commissioner is warning people about an agency study that would bring government monitors into newsrooms and inspect issues like the amount of time spent on the “critical information needs” [CIN’s] of Americans in news content.

If only there was a way for Obama’s FCC to get the First Amendment under control.

The FCC has evidently cooked up eight “CIN’s” that it feels outlets should be covering. Their study would demand that news departments answer a series of questions designed to “ascertain the process by which stories are selected, station priorities (for content production quality, and populations served), perceived station bias, perceived percent of news dedicated to each of the eight CIN’s and perceived responsiveness to underserved populations.”

They also want to “understand the critical information needs of the American public. One of the issues addressed in the study is how these CINs are framed, and whether said framing does enough do give viewers the full context of the story.”

Of course, this means that the FCC will have to determine what the “correct” context is so that they can decide if it was presented properly by TV and radio stations. Perhaps even more disturbing is the fact that the monitors would be sent to newspapers as well - organizations over which the FCC has no regulatory authority.

Whether you hail from the right or the left, you’d have to be blind as a bat not to see the potential for abuse here.

A report from Fox News - an outlet President Obama blames for his ongoing failure - appears below.