Toomey to FCC: Don't Stifle Freedom of the Press

February 26, 2014

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to explain its inappropriate attempts to police news rooms nationwide. Senator Toomey and all of his Republican Senate colleagues signed a letter to the FCC Chairman asking him to explain the federal government’s intrusion into newsrooms.

In recent weeks, Americans learned that the FCC was attempting to move forward with a Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs (CIN Study), which would investigate how news rooms select stories, “perceived station bias,” and even about why news stations do not spend more time reporting stories the Administration deems “critical.” After the study received national condemnation, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler suspended it and indicated that the survey would be subsequently “revised.”

“It is impossible to imagine a rationale for the Commission to consider using the CIN Study under any circumstance given its flagrantly unconstitutional implications,” Sen. Toomey and the other Senators wrote. “We demand an explanation of how the Commission internally justified the CIN Study as fulfilling its statutory requirement to report on market barriers to entry, as well as the costs incurred by the Commission on this blatantly inappropriate study. We also insist all commissioners be involved in future statutorily required studies in order to guard against the clear potential for abuse.”