Government picking winners and losers

Does the FCC want some broadcast television stations to go dark, while allowing cable and satellite operators to continue to thrive? Fred Campbell writes,

A big broadcast selloff occurred after the FCC issued a public notice on March 12 announcing new standards for reviewing broadcast transactions. Analysts have since determined that limiting television sharing agreements would weaken the over-the-air television market, especially in smaller markets.

Read more here.

"Critical information needs"

Mark Steyn has been writing about how corrupt our federal government's regulatory agencies have become, in addition to the corrupt revenue agency and the corrupt justice department. Now he takes notice of the FCC, which has decided to send regulators into newsrooms to determine whether or not news departments are providing information on eight "critical information needs" and "underserved populations."

Steyn writes,

But what if you're a news editor and you happen to disagree that "the environment" is one of the eight most Critical Information Needs. What if you happen to think that "runaway public debt" or "the vulnerability of US diplomatic facilities in Libya" is a more Critical Information Need than "the environment"?

The state has no business determining which news stories have priorities over others, and certainly no business sending monitors into newsrooms to ensure compliance - because the essence of a functioning press is not what the state decrees the citizen has a "critical need" to know but what it doesn't think he needs to know.

Government of the United States is increasingly corrupt. Covering that story is the "critical information need".