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RUSH: So yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, I told you that the media would not be upset over this FCC idea of monitors in newsrooms. And I further told you — and I admit this was a guess but it was an educated guess — that I wouldn’t be surprised if I found out that a journalism school was actually behind this idea. I mentioned to you that there wouldn’t be any protests from journalists or journalism schools. I said:

“If it turns out here that a dean or an entire j-school is behind this idea, it won’t surprise me a bit.” And guess what? There are two, ladies and gentlemen. “The FCC commissioned the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Communication and Democracy to do a study defining what information is ‘critical’ for citizens to have.


“The scholars decided that ‘critical information’ is information that people need to ‘live safe and healthy lives’ and to ‘have full access to educational, employment, and business opportunities’ …” That’s what the news should be. Any mea culpas in there? Anybody want to now admit what I told you: This isn’t about news anymore, it’s about advancing the Democrat Party agenda? It’s about advancing the leftist agenda. (interruption) Why is it uncanny?

For 25 years I’ve been accurately predicting this. This is interesting. It really is. For 25 years I’ve been predicting this, and yet people still doubt me. Now, look, I’m smiling when I say this. I don’t want anybody to misunderstand. But, on the one hand, it is kind of serious. I am a renowned authority — one of the world’s foremost — on the left; I’m never wrong about them. And yet, even now, after 25 years of demonstrable proof of that assertion, I’m still doubted.

(interruption) All right. Okay. All right. So this goes to the core of a free press. You would think even they would understand this. It’s a new world. There isn’t any news. That’s not what journalism is anymore. You don’t go into journalism because you want to report news to people. You don’t go into journalism because you want to find out first what’s happening and be the first to report to other people what’s happening.

That’s not why you go into journalism. You go into journalism to advance an agenda. World peace, ending world poverty, destroying the powerful, whatever it is. But it is not related to the news anymore. By the way, Katy Bachman, who I mentioned yesterday that I’ve encountered in my professional broadcast career, writes at Adweek. She reported yesterday that the program has been dialed back.

It hasn’t. It has not been dialed back. They want us to think it has. Lanny Davis has stood up in outrage. Well-known Clinton defender, Lanny Davis, stood up in outrage. It’s typical. He says, “Obama needs to find out who did this and fire him!” Lanny, Obama would have to fire himself, and that isn’t going to happen. Can I tell you what else I found? I found a tweet. I have a got a screen shot here. It’s very small, and it could have been Facebook.

But it’s a tweet, and it is from a Democrat running for Congress in Virginia against Eric Cantor. The Democrat’s name is Mike Dickinson, and it looks like the tweet is from February 17th. So four days ago. I’m going to read you the tweet. “Fox News does nothing but tell lies and mistruths. They have unqualified political analysts. We need FCC to monitor and regulate them.”

That’s a Democrat candidate for Congress. Do you think this is a coincidence, four days this clown comes out and tweets this? Do you know whose idea this really is? I can’t say it’s her idea, but do you know where this gem of an idea originated? Try Mignon Clyburn, the daughter of James Clyburn, who was a ranking member of the Congressional Black Caucasians in the House of Representatives. He has a daughter. He named her after a steak — a prime cut of steak, but nevertheless a steak.

The filet is the least amount of fat. If you serve it without a bone, it’s the tenderest. Yeah, it’s probably one of the most tender cuts, prime cuts you can get. He named his daughter after a steak. A very lean steak. Mignon Clyburn. Mignon is the agent behind this. The Washington Examiner: “The First Amendment says ‘Congress shall make no lawÂ…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…’

“But under the Obama [Regime] the Federal Communications Commission is planning to send government contractors into the nation’s newsrooms to determine whether journalists are producing articles, television reports, Internet content, and commentary that meets the public’s ‘critical information needs.’ Those ‘needs’ will be defined by the administration, and news outlets that do not comply with the government’s standards could face an uncertain future.

“It’s hard to imagine a project more at odds with the First Amendment.” No, it’s not hard to imagine! That’s the point! It isn’t hard to imagine it! Maybe it’s hard to accept it, but it isn’t hard to imagine. It’s right in front of your face! They’re being very open about it! They’re not even doing this under the cover of darkness. They’re not even doing this while nobody’s looking. They’re doing it wide open, under a full sun.

“The initiative, known around the agency as ‘the CIN Study’ (pronounced ‘sin’), is a bit of a mystery even to insiders. ‘This has never been put to an FCC vote, it was just announced,’ says Ajit Pai, one of the FCC’s five commissioners (and one of its two Republicans).” So he’s one of the FCC’s commissars, and he’s one of two Republicans commissars. Of course, the president being a Democrat, he gets the majority of the commissars.


They used to be called “commissioners,” but I’m calling these people “commissars” because they’re high commissars — and in the German, they are “haupt commissars,” h-a-u-p-t, high commissars. And it is what it is. Here are some pull quotes: “Advocates promote the project with Obama-esque rhetoric.” Advocates! Advocates! There are people in support of this. There’s nobody out there in the media frightened about this. They think what this is going to end up doing is silencing Fox News and me.

That’s the attraction to them for this. “This study begins the charting of a course to a more effective delivery of necessary information to all citizens,” said FCC commisar Mignon Clyburn in 2012. This thing goes back two years! One of the Republican commissars is who made this public. Now that it’s public, nobody’s denying it. They did tell Katy Bachman that they’re pulling back on it but they’re not.

I want you to listen to this quote again from Mignon Clyburn. She might pronounce it “Mig-non,” I donÂ’t know. I’ve never heard her name pronounced. (interruption) Is it Mignon? Have you heard her name pronounced? (interruption) Well, I’ll call her Mignon. Mignon Clyburn, daughter of James Clyburn, Congressional Black Caucasian. By the way, do you know what he does?

The guy’s got a publication in South Carolina, Charleston I think. They’ve got a publication aimed at the African-American community. So he’s in the business himself, so to speak. But listen to this. “This study begins the charting of a course to a more effective delivery of necessary information to all citizens.” This means the Regime is going to determine what the news is. The study is for the news outlets to tell the Regime how they pick the news and what they decide to ignore in the news.

And the Regime is going to come in and say, “No, no, no. Here’s what the news is, and here’s what isn’t the news.” That’s, in a nutshell, what this is. This is the regime officially making it State-Controlled Media. “The FCC commissioned the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Communication and Democracy to do a study defining what information is ‘critical’ for citizens to have.

“The scholars,” at these two journalism schools, “decided that ‘critical information'” that We the People need from the media “is information that people need to ‘live safe and healthy lives’…” Well, they’re already doing that. Don’t you get it? They’re already telling us how much we can eat, how much of a soda we can’t have. They’re already doing this, and not just the media! Elected officials are already telling us how to live healthy lives, what we can and can’t eat.

Also, the scholars of these two journalism schools decided that another avenue of critical information for the people is ‘full access to educational, employment, and business opportunities,’ among other things.” So the news is going to become a giant classified ads section: Educational, employment, business opportunities, among other things. “If the FCC goes forward,” pull quote from the story, “it’s not clear what will happen to news organizations that fall short of the new government standards.

“Perhaps they will be disciplined. Or perhaps the very threat of investigating their methods will nudge them into compliance with the [Regime]’s journalistic agenda. What is sure is that it will be a gross violation of constitutional rights.” This is Byron York’s piece, by the way, from the Washington Examiner, I’m reading. That’s his pull quote. In the United States of America this is being written, as though it’s likely to happen it’s almost a fait accompli?

And all we’re talking about here is what’s going to happen to the dissidents, what’s going to happen to the resistance? It will be underground. They’re going to have to broadcast some private locations on private frequencies. “Perhaps news organizations that fall short of the new government standards … will be disciplined. Or perhaps the very threat of investigating their methods will nudge them into compliance…”

That’s what they’ve done with the Republican Party. The Republican Party is in total compliance with the Democrat Party, is it not, in terms of the party at the establishment level? Have they not been “nudged” into total compliance? And who are the holdouts? Me and talk radio and, some of them say, Fox News. They’re not pulling back on this. They have not set it aside, as they reported yesterday. I have some audio sound bites from the commissar, Ajit Pai, coming up.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, for those who think the media would stand up in righteous outrage I want to remind you: October 9th, 2013, last year, Los Angeles Times announced that was going to be stop publishing letters to the editor if they held a view that manmade global warming was a hoax. If they were “climate deniers,” the LA Times was no longer going to publish them because they’re just wrong. They’re not going to waste space.


Here is Ajit Pai (it may be “pay,” it’s p-a-i) last night On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, and she said, “What’s been the response by the other commiss[ars] at the FCC?”

PAI: I’m pleased to report that, uh, tonight, uhh, the chairman of the FCC Tom Wheeler has instructed the contractor who will be doing this study, uh, to remove questions from the study relating to news philosophy and editorial judgment. And I think that’s a positive step, but, of course, the devil’s in the details when it comes to the actual study as implemented.

RUSH: Right, and remember: The Republicans have two seats on the FCC. The Democrats have three plus the chairmanship. This is not going to be dialed back. Whatever they have to tell Republicans in Congress to get them to go along with whatever the Democrat agenda is, they’ll say. This is the Democrat agenda. This is going to happen. Mr. Pai had one more thing to say about this.


PAI: The study was designed and adopted under previous leadership and I think the reaction you have is the one that a lot of people in America have, and that is that the government doesn’t have a place in the newsroom. They don’t need the government over the shoulders telling them that they’re doing something wrong. The study hasn’t yet started, and that’s why I think it’s critical for us to make sure at the outset that either we stop the study or if it’s going forward, uh, we make sure it doesn’t infringe on anyone’s constitutional freedoms.

RUSH: I tell you, that just amazes me. No, I don’t have time to tell you why because I have to break right here. But what amazes me is the whole attitude here. It just amazes me.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, ladies and gentlemen, this is already happening in the UK. I have a UK Guardian story here from January 30th: “Diversity Monitoring Service Will Show Broadcasters If They’re Hitting Targets — BBC, ITV, Sky and Channel 4 to join pilot to be launched by the Creative Diversity Network. A monitoring service that will assess how the major broadcasters are performing against their diversity targets — and each other — is about to be launched by the Creative Diversity Network.

“The aim is that the initiative will become a permanent benchmark to track the industry’s successes and failures, holding its key players to account. A pilot is set to launch in the spring, featuring the BBC, ITV, Sky and Channel 4. However, it is not clear how much of the data will be shared publicly.” So “diversity monitoring” is in the works in the UK. Now, technically this isn’t being imposed by the government, per se. It’s being done after pressure by the government. The British don’t have a First Amendment, by the way.


There’s no freedom of speech, per se. There is no freedom of the press, per se. Did you know that, that the British don’t have a constitution? (interruption) You didn’t know that? Everybody thinks that every other country has a constitution. The Brits do not have a constitution — and, ergo, there’s no actual First Amendment. There may be in practice the notion of a free press, but it isn’t codified. Sticking with the sound bites, would you grab number three?

I have to be careful. I don’t want to be critical of the Republican Commissar, Mr. Ajit Pai. It might be Ajit Pai. (sigh) I’m sorry. I need to make a mental note. I need to find pronunciations of people’s names, because I never hear them pronounced because of my hearing. I don’t ever have the volume up. It’s just noise to me. So if there’s no pronunciation guide, I don’t know, and so I have to pronounce it all these different ways to assure the subject I’m not trying to purposely get it wrong.

I want you to listen. I’m sure he’s a great guy. But think of what’s going on here. We actually have the federal government ripping the First Amendment to shreds here, and we’re talking about it in a reasonable, scholarly, introspective, ahh, extro-speculative scholarly way. This ought not be given one iota of respect! This view doesn’t have any merit. We don’t have to respect this view that the government’s going to go in and start monitoring the content of the news!

Hey, look at this, a pronunciation. It’s Ah-jeet Pie.” I was really close. Again, he’s one of the two Republican commissars, FCC. Greta Van Susteren last night: “Look, it might be a positive step that they’re dialing this back a little, but you’d have to be out of your mind to have proposed this in the first place. So, you know, I suppose it’s great the commissioner now, after everyone is raining all over his parade. But who in his right mind, suggested this in the first place, or thought it was OK to send monitors into newsrooms?”

See, she’s got the right attitude. She’s literally outraged at the entire concept.

Here’s the answer again…

PAI: The study was designed and adopted under previous leadership and I think the reaction you have is the one that a lot of people in America have, and that is that the government doesn’t have a place in the newsroom. They don’t need the government over the shoulders telling them that they’re doing something wrong. The study hasn’t yet started, and that’s why I think it’s critical for us to make sure at the outset that either we stop the study or if it’s going forward, uh, we make sure it doesn’t infringe on anyone’s constitutional freedoms.

RUSH: What do you mean “if it’s going forward”? It is infringing on constitutional freedoms by virtue of its design! The government doesn’t get to monitor content. The government doesn’t get to say what anybody can or can’t say, specifically in political speech, and specifically if they’re in the media. Do you all find it strange that I am one of the few in the media outraged by this?

I mean, I’m not technically a journalist, because I laugh and smile and I love America. So I’m not a journalist. But there’s cricket silence out there about this. Now, admittedly people like me are the target of this thing, and the Drive-By journalists do not think they’re the targets. I guaran-damn-tee you that’s why they’re being silent. They don’t think they’re the targets.

They don’t think Obama wants to shut them down and they know how to make sure he doesn’t and that is: Just kiss ass. Every day, just keep kissing butt, that’s all you gotta do. You’ve got a regime monitor in there. This is why I was telling Snerdley yesterday I think the media is going to like this. “There’s a monitor in there! There’s somebody who can report back to Obama how good I’m doing, how big a butt kisser I am.


“There’s a monitor in there going to report right back to Obama what a great job I’m doing advancing the agenda.” There’s no fear in the Drive-Bys because they don’t think they’re the targets of this. (interruption) They don’t know that. Snerdley says, “They’ve got to know they won’t stay in power forever.” You know what my dad used to always tell me? When he was being educated about communism and what it did to people…

You know, what it literally meant for people, how it did not just deny their freedoms but ended up with many of them dying. There’s a wall built in countries to keep people in, not keep people out. You end up in political prisons, end up tortured. There is no upward mobility economically. The leaders take it all. There’s literally nothing. It’s an absolute dungeon of existence, and he always used to tell me that the people in the media don’t realize they’re going to be the first to shut up.

They’re going to be the first silenced. They’re going to be the first to go. Unless they’re brought in line, unless they’re willing to toe the line, unless they’re willing to become absolute butt kissers and report everything written for them. If there’s any dissent there, they’re gone, because the state is going to control the media — and anybody in the media who is not cool with that is going to be the first silenced.

Actually, the first thing a totalitarian regime will do is go for universal health care. If you doubt that… Look, that’s a matter of historical record. That’s not an opinion even. Go look at what the national socialists did in Germany. What’s the first thing? It’s always under the auspices of helping the poor, the downtrodden, making everybody healthy and keep everybody from getting sick, everybody.

You control healthcare and you control every aspect of every citizen’s life. You hold their lives in your hands. If they surrender their medical care to you, you own them. Then the next thing you do is you move in — it almost happens simultaneously — and you control the media. Go study what Mao Tse-tung did. Go study what Castro did the revolution in Cuba. Anywhere. Look at Hugo Chavez. The reason I say this is Snerdley said, “Don’t these people in the media know?”

No! They think they’re on the same side. They think they’re loved and adored. They want to be agents. The people that you see on CBS, ABC, they want to be on the team. So they’re going to be sucking up, doing whatever they have to do to get noticed, to stay in good stead if you will. Here’s more from Ajit Pai. Greta Van Susteren said, “Well, look, what’s the authority for the FCC even to think that it can do this, Mr. Pai? What’s the statute that they think that they must or are complying with here to do something like this?”

PAI: Technically the FCC is relying on a statute that requires the FCC to report to Congress every three years on barriers that entrepreneurs and small businesses face when they’re trying to get into the communications industry.

VAN SUSTEREN: All right, stop there. What does asking the question about whether or not you’ve been prevented from telling a story have anything to do with being a barrier?

PAI: That’s exactly the concern I have, that there isn’t any connection — and moreover, uh, even if there were some connection the FCC doesn’t have any regulatory authority when it comes to the print media. And so we don’t tell newspapers what to cover. And newspapers, nonetheless, are covered under the CIN study.

RUSH: What does that tell you? They don’t care what the First Amendment says. But you notice the hook here. I mentioned this yesterday. The hook is, “We’re going to do a study to find out what the barriers are to minority ownership of media properties.” So Greta said, “Okay, so, what in the world does how any newsroom chooses the stories that it’s going to report have to do with whether or not the minorities can own broadcast properties? Mr. Ajit Pai said, “Yeah, that’s the same question I had.”

I’ll tell you the answer, that’s how you get everybody supporting the study, the concept of the study. “It’s to help minorities. It’s to help victims. It’s to help the poor — and, of course, this country’s so unjust and so immoral and so unfair that the media is like everything else. It’s like Big Oil. It’s like Big Pharma. It’s run by a bunch of racist, rich, white pigs — and we have to change that.


“So we’re going to find out how these racist, rich, white pigs are keeping everybody out — and we’ll do that by finding out how they taint the news so as to create racist attitudes about potential minority entrepreneurs.” Everybody’s going, “Yeah! Yeah!” TMZ. E Entertainment Network, Low-Information Yahoo News. “Yeah, go for it because we want equality and we want fairness,” when in truth the biggest barrier to anybody owning a broadcast property is what?

Money.

Money.

So I think, if they’re really serious, they need to take the subprime mortgage program and transfer it over to the broadcast business, and call it the Subprime Broadcast Purchase Opportunity, and let people that can’t afford to buy broadcast outlets buy them. Give them the mortgage. Give them the loan. Let them buy the TV station, the radio station or whatever and know that they can’t pay it back. Demand that the banks lend the money like they did in the housing business, or else they will be investigated.

That’s how you do it.

But you see there’s much more than this than just minority ownership.

That’s just the hook.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Last night on Hannity. The fill-in host was Angela Tarantula. She was saying to Lanny Davis, “Your good friend Hillary [Rodham] admitted that the [Regime] is losing the information war.” Hillary said the Obama administration is losing the information war! Did Hillary say that? What in the world is she talking about if she means that?

What information war are they losing? Don’t look it up. I mean, I just don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense. Losing the information war? Who is beating them in the information war? Do you mean Obama’s being caught in his lies? What does this mean? Anyway, Andrea Tarantula said, “Is that why they’re doing this, sending these monitors into these news rooms because they feel like they’re losing hold of the messaging?”


DAVIS: This is nuts. I can’t help your audience at all loves to disagree with me. But most people, in the Fox audience at least, seem to. I think this is crazy. It is unconstitutional. Whatever they do with it, uh, it clearly could have a chilling effect on news gathering. We have a First Amendment. Whoever at the FCC calls themselves a Democrat much less a liberal Democrat cannot be behind this, and I would really question the sanity of somebody at the FCC even thinking of this idea.

RUSH: Well, you better. Lanny, it’s Mignon Clyburn. This is her brain child, along with… By the way, it’s not her brain child. This is Obama’s idea. This is the one thing… Here. Here’s the next Lanny Davis bite because he actually thinks that Obama ought to find out who did this and fire them. Andrea Tarantula said, “They want to ask if a reporter has ever been called by their boss whether or not a story can be approved or not. So essentially they’re asking the reporters and station managers to rat out their bosses. What’s the unintended consequence of that?”


LANNY: L-l-look, I’m really having a hard time, uh, other than saying whoever, uh, is saying that this is happening… The FCC, someone at the FCC has to say this is not true. Because if it’s true, then President Obama ought to be firing everybody he can over there who thought about this idea.

RUSH: See? Isn’t it classic? “Boy, somebody better tell Obama who’s doing this! Somebody better make him aware of what’s going on here, because when he finds out about this, he’s going to be really mad like he was after Benghazi! He’s going to fire somebody like he did after Benghazi, like he did after Fast and Furious. Like he’s gotta find the guy who made him lie about keeping your doctor!

“Whoever that guy is, I hope he never gets found. The guy that told Obama that premiums were going to be reduced $2,500 a year, that guy is going to be fired, too, if Obama ever finds out who told him that!” I’m listening to these guys… (laughing) Lanny Davis is close here, but it is obvious to me, to sum this up, that nobody is willing to admit just who these people are. Nobody is willing to admit — even with Obama violating the constitution as often as he does, nobody’s willing to admit — that we’ve got a regime that doesn’t like it and wants to circumvent it and maybe get rid of it if they could.

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