Regulators in Washington are seeking to amend the First Amendment by using “administrative fiat” to make an end run around Congress, a member of the Federal Election Commission said on Thursday.
“Three unelected FEC commissioners are trying to amend the First Amendment without going through the two-thirds vote requirements mandated by the Constitution,” FEC Commissioner Lee Goodman told the Washington Examiner.
His comments came on the same day the FEC was set to release an administrative file showing the agency’s three Democrats voted to punish Fox News for holding a Republican presidential debate that excluded a candidate with little public support.
Goodman pointed out that it is the second time in history the FEC has considered whether to engage in what Goodman called censorship of a news agency. The first time was in 1980, when the commission moved to censure New Hampshire’s Nashua “Telegraph” for sponsoring a presidential debate between Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. The publication subsequently backed out, and Reagan covered the cost of the debate himself.
“The FEC sought to censor the Nashua Telegraph in 1980, and now people in the agency are trying to censor Fox News for great … coverage of 17 candidates in debate format,” added Goodman, who also served for a year as FEC chairman.
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“Congress does not need to amend the First Amendment, because three commissioners at the FEC are amending the free press clause by administrative fiat,” Goodman said. “This agency must recognize the limits of its regulatory jurisdiction. The agency has no authority to regulate, punish or censor American press organizations.
“Newsrooms and journalists everywhere should object to a federal bureaucracy that seeks to punish their newsroom editorial decisions,” he added.
