“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
This quotation, taken directly from the Constitution’s First Amendment should be among the easiest ones to understand.
Democratic senators are now trying to weaken Second, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights in their push for new gun laws. They also controversially voted in 2014 to weaken the First Amendment, specifically to let both Congress and state legislators regulate political speech. Yet even they have not yet dared to launch an attack on the freedom of the press.
But their fellow partisans on the Federal Election Commission do not scruple to take such a step. They are completely out of control; they voted, it was revealed Wednesday, to regulate the press and the editorial judgment of its members.
After years of chomping at the bit to go after conservative bloggers and aggregators on the internet, the three Democratic commissioners on the FEC went even further with an unprecedented effort to insert themselves into a cable news network’s editorial judgment.
Last August, when Fox News held a presidential debate, the sheer number of Republican candidates required the network to make difficult choices about who to include and who to exclude.
Given the sheer size of the field, Fox News decided not to invite some no-hope minor candidates who had no demonstrated public support and not a prayer of winning the nomination. This was the trade-off the cable network made when they allowed seven candidates with only a small chance to participate in what was referred to as the undercard debate.
This is a question of editorial judgment, something without which press freedom cannot exist. Fox News wanted to make sure its viewers could hear from as many viable candidates as possible, of whom there were quite enough at that point to begin with, yet keep the debates watchable.
Unfortunately, one of the no-chance candidates filed an FEC complaint, accusing the network of making a corporate in-kind contribution to the seven candidates who appeared in the undercard debate. This should not have been a big deal. Anyone with a scintilla of judgment would have recognized that this was ground upon which the FEC should never tread. No government agency can control what journalists decide is worthy of one kind of coverage or another, or of no coverage at all.
The First Amendment not only forbids Congress from legislating away press freedom, but it also constrains government bureaucrats from interpreting legislation that Congress has passed, such as campaign finance legislation, in ways that abridge press freedom.
This is common sense, but the three Democratic commissioners at the FEC, Ann Ravel, Ellen Weintraub and Steven Walther, don’t have any. They voted to punish the news organization’s editorial judgement, and were only prevented from inflicting it because the other three (Republican) commissioners voted against and produced a 3-3 tie.
But the three Democratic commissioners’ odious and unconstitutional effort, which reeks of authoritarianism, deserve to lose their jobs. They should not be able blithely to take such an outrageous step without consequences.
This egregious act goes far beyond any of the FEC’s misdeeds to date. You may not like Fox News, but do not be so naive as to believe that your favorite news organization will not suffer consequences if the FEC decides that news editors across America should be second guessed by government officials in their news judgments about coverage of presidential campaigns. One of the current presidential candidates has already threatened legislative retribution against news organizations in the form of weakened libel protections. Imagine the sort of retribution he could exact using the powers that these FEC officials were trying to claim.
The three usurpacious FEC commissioners should be removed from office for violating their oaths to uphold the Constitution. Surely, President Obama can find suitable replacements.
