It appears that the FCC will be looking over the shoulders of journalists and asking some tough questions of broadcasters. This cannot be good. Some of us who have been around awhile remember the days when the FCC enforced the so-called Fairness Doctrine. It stifled debate and limited speech. It led to lawsuits throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Once it stopped enforcing the policy in 1987, talk radio flourished. The FCC just took it off the books a few years ago.

Ajit Pai is an FCC Commissioner who is concerned with a new initiative that will thrust the federal government into the newsrooms around the country. The FCC is planning a “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs (CIN).” The purpose of the study is to ferret out information from television and radio broadcasters in order to determine possible bias. He says the FCC also wants to wade into office politics by asking if management rejected certain stories.

How does the FCC plan to get this information? “It plans to ask station managers, news directors, journalists, television anchors and on-air reporters to tell them their ‘news philosophy’ and how the stations ensures that the community gets critical information.”

Participation in the study is voluntary—in theory, the commissioner says. But let’s put some of this in perspective. Broadcasters are dependent on the FCC for licensing. “They would be out of business without an FCC license, which must be renewed every eight years.”

But there’s more. The FCC study also includes newspapers. Ajit Pai reminds us that the FCC has no authority to regulate print media. Of course, that doesn’t seem to bother bureaucrats in the FCC. A federal judge recently ruled that the FCC cannot regulate the Internet, yet the agency has already proposed Net Neutrality rules.

Once again we are seeing federal bureaucrats expanding their oversight without congressional approval. This is one more example of a lawlessness by an agency that must be reigned in.