By: David Limbaugh (CNS News)
Any freedom-loving person would be outraged at the attempt by the Federal Communications Commission to inject itself into monitoring the practices of print and broadcast media organizations, but the outrage came almost exclusively from conservatives, which is highly instructive.
But liberals and conservatives are on such different planets that they don't even agree that this development — that only conservatives objected — is instructive, which is also instructive.
The Washington Post was hoist with its own petard in reacting with a subtly pointed headline, "Proposed FCC study of news organizations sparks conservative outcry," and exposing its own biases rather than those of conservatives.
Simply put, everyone should object to this proposed action, and the fact that only conservatives did shows they are the only ones acting as freedom's guardians. That liberals didn't object is bad but is made much worse by their opinion that conservatives' objection is itself objectionable.
If blindly ideological liberals had a clue, they'd understand that the primary reason conservatives object is not their fear that certain media outlets will be exposed as unfairly conservative. Conservatives strenuously oppose the proposed action because it is such a threat to our First Amendment liberties, and any government that would even casually contemplate such a move is one to be greatly feared — and beaten back.
Of course, conservatives also fear that government monitoring of media outlets would in fact lead to a disproportionate chilling of conservative expression, which is inevitable when those doing the monitoring are guaranteed to be liberals who delude themselves into believing that only liberally minded people are capable of being objective. If you think that is an exaggeration, listen to liberal hosts of the major networks assessing one another as committed, objective journalists while decrying the bias of conservatives. Their lack of self-awareness is stunning.
But even if conservatives are wrong about this, liberals have nothing to fear from us on this issue anyway, because we are not the ones proposing dangerous ideas to monitor, regulate and suppress speech. They are. In the past 50 years, any serious encroachments on First Amendment political and religious expression have come almost exclusively from the left — from campus speech codes to the Fairness Doctrine to Net neutrality.