Is Obama Trying To Control The Media?

Meaning The Radio, Newspapers, Television And The Internet!

 

There are ever increasing signs that having used the main stream media to bring him to power, and after using the Internet to fund his election campaign, that Obama now intends to put as much of the media under his control as possible.

There’s an article about this very subject that appeared back in October 31, 2008 entitled, Would Obama Reign Like Putin?, which raised the specter of Obama attempting to do exactly that.

The Internet

There’s a bill that’s presently be rammed through Congress at breakneck speed that would give Obama sweeping powers to control parts of the Internet.

The bipartisan bill was introduced in the Senate just last week, but it’s already moving quickly through Congress toward passage and the legislation is already generating a very bad buzz on many tech blogs.

It’s not clear to me whether the MSM either approves of the bill or hasn’t yet noticed its passage, either of which would be par for the course for those that brought about Obama’s election.

What Would Obama Be Able To Do?

The bill would grant President Obama the power to declare a "national cyber-emergency" at his discretion and force private companies tied to the Web, including Internet service providers and search engines, to take action in response, which in essence means that he’d be able to limit or even cut off their connections to the World Wide Web for up to 30 days.

What Is The Supposed Purpose Of The Bill?

While the bill’s sponsors say it is intended to create a shield to defend the United States and its largest companies from the growing threat of cyber-attacks, civil-liberties activists fear the bill could give the White House the ability to effectively shut down portions of the Internet for politically inspired reasons.

Gregory Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology noted, "We have seen through recent history that in an emergency, the Executive Branch will interpret grants of power very broadly".

Wayne Crews, who is vice president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, that is a free-enterprise think tank, said he believes the bill is so broadly worded that it might even allow the White House to take aim at whistle-blowing websites that were believed to pose a national-security threat, such as WikiLeaks, in the guise of a "cyber-emergency."

What Is WikiLeaks?

WikiLeaks, which nominally based in Sweden, publishes and comments on leaked documents alleging government and corporate misconduct.

It is preparing to post a classified Pentagon video depicting an American airstrike in Afghanistan last year that left as many as one hundred and forty people dead, most of them children and teenagers.

Obama would of course certainly love to be able to stop the video from being posted.

Who Introduced The Bill?

The Protecting Cyberspace Act was introduced by Senator Joseph Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the panel’s ranking Republican.

Counterparts in the House Homeland Security Committee have endorsed identical legislation, meaning that a final bill could be adopted by the full Congress within weeks.

Lieberman’s committee spokeswoman, Leslie Phillips, said the bill was an effort to defend the nation’s most important electronic networks, "the networks that are most central to our daily lives, and not at attacking anything", and she was particularly agitated at any suggestion that the bill might give the White House the opportunity to try to shut down individual websites on national-security grounds.

"In no way is the senator’s cyber-security legislation directed at websites, not WikiLeaks or anyone else’s".

MSM – Radio, Newspapers And TV

Meanwhile, Jon Leibowitz, who is the chairman of Obama’s Federal Trade Commission, is spearheading an agenda that would allow news organizations to be subsidized, which would most likely be a first step toward government control of the media.

Among the measures under consideration are special tax treatment, exemption from antitrust laws and changes in copyright laws.

A May 24, working paper on "reinventing" the media proposes that the government impose fees on websites such as the Drudge Report that link to news websites or that it tax consumer electronics such as iPads, laptops and Kindles and the funds raised by these levies would be redistributed to traditional media outlets, and these are of course exactly the kind of subsidies that could and would trigger government oversight and control.

The White House has already openly and passionately attacked Fox News and raised the question as to whether it is "a news organization or an arm of the Republican Party?".

Radio stations already squirm when their licenses come up for renewal before the F.C.C. (Federal Communications Commission) and one can easily imagine news organizations pulling their punches so as not to alienate the new hand that feeds them.

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