In the battle over media and communications freedom, no group poses a more serious threat to a free and independent press than the insultingly misnamed regulatory activist group Free Press. Along with their founders, the prolific neo-Marxist media theorist Robert W. McChesney and Nation correspondent John Nichols, Free Press has engaged in relentless agitation for a truly radical media and communications policy agenda, and their influence is now spreading throughout the Obama Administration.

The Free Press-McChesney blueprint for media “reform” reads more like a script for State servitude. On the regulatory side, they call for media ownership restrictions, “localism” mandates, “Net neutrality” regulations, price controls on broadband, advertising and copyright restrictions, and layers of additional regulatory edicts.  Once all that red tape smothers the life out the independent press and private communications providers, they plan to have the State step in become the primary benefactor of the Fourth Estate and high-tech infrastructure. For starters, McChesney and Nichols advocate a $35 billion annual “public works” program for the press modeled after the Works Progress Administration of the New Deal era. Their media WPA would include a “News AmeriCorps” for out-of-work journalists, a “Citizenship News Voucher” to funnel taxpayer support to struggling media entities, a significant expansion of postal subsidies, a massive new subsidy for journalism schools, corporate welfare for newspapers sufficient to pay 50 percent of the salaries of all “journalistic employees,” municipal government ownership of press and infrastructure, and many more bureaucratic programs. (more…)

While Free Press pitches a (staged?) hissy fit about one with AT&T, Verizon – and Google and Skype

Chairman Julius Genachowski and his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have been for quite some time seeking to drastically increase their regulatory control over the internet.

The Chairman and the Commission lack the legal authority to do this.  They have been told this by (at least) a Clinton-appointee led federal appeals court – in the Comcast-BitTorrent case – and a bipartisan Congressional contingent, who wrote Chairman Genachowski letters telling him to cut it out.

Undaunted, Chairman Genachowski headed once more into the breach.  On June 17^th, he convened the five FCC Commissioners to vote on a proposed reclassification of broadband – from the lightly regulated Title I to the much more burdensome Title II.  And the Commission voted to begin the investigative process, on a Democrat Party-line 3-2 vote.

All of this was done to the delight – and the crack of the whip – of the Media Marxists.  Led by the egregiously mis-named organization Free Press, the Media Marxists make up the “media reform” wing of the “social justice” movement.  Members of this movement are currently in power in Washington, and they are seeking to fundamentally transform our nation.

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Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski is a big advocate of net neutrality. The agency is considering implementing rules that would greatly advance this goal.

Opponents have described the effort as a government plan to take over and manage the internet.  However, it seems Genachowski actions are raising questions about the FCC’s ability to regulate with any degree of competence. On Wednesday, Genachowski requested a one-month extension of the deadline for the FCC to formulate a national broadband plan.  Under current law, the FCC is supposed to hand over its national broadband plan to Congress on or before February 17.

According to Colin Cromwell, a senior adviser to Genachowski, the Agency needs more time to:

“fully brief commissioners and key members of Congress, to get additional input from stakeholders, and to fully digest the exhaustive record before the agency”

However, publicly and privately, critics are slamming Genachowski for mismanagement and an apparent inability to get things done on time.  Robert McDowell, a Republican member of the FCC said in a statement this week:

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