The Patriot Post® · Biden's FCC Pick Is an Anti-Speech Radical
Apparently, some of Gigi Sohn’s best friends are Republicans. And, according to a social media post of hers, “They’re not all insane.”
Gee, thanks.
Sohn, whom Joe Biden has nominated to fill a vacancy on the five-member Federal Communications Commission, was on Capitol Hill yesterday to testify before the Senate Commerce Committee, and she got a much-deserved earful from Republican senators who were well aware of her loathing for viewpoints at odds with her own.
“All who know her would agree she is knowledgeable and a determined advocate,” said Mississippi’s Roger Wicker, the committee’s ranking member, in his opening statement. “I am concerned about her record of expressing hyper-partisan views on many critical matters that have come before the commission and which may come before the commission again in the future.”
What sort of hyper-partisan views might those be? Well, she once insisted that Fox News is “dangerous to democracy.”
“For all my concerns about Facebook,” she once posted, “I believe that Fox News has had the most negative impact on our democracy. It’s state-sponsored propaganda, with few if any opposing viewpoints. Where’s the hearing about that?” Fox News is the opposing view, of course, in a broadcast media landscape otherwise dominated by CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, and actual state-sponsored propaganda at NPR and PBS.
If confirmed, she’d not only be another LGBTQ+ feather in Joe Biden’s rainbow-colored cap, she’d be the tiebreaking vote on the commission. And if we’re to take her words seriously, she’d make it a high priority to go after Fox News.
Never fear, though: Sohn said such comments were merely in the interest of public advocacy and that her personal opinions “will have no bearing on how I would act if I’m confirmed as an FCC commissioner.”
Fox News, though, wouldn’t be the only conservative voice with a target on its back. Sohn has also called for Sinclair Broadcasting — which operates 294 TV stations in 89 markets across the country — to lose its FCC license, stating that its conservative perspective “calls into question Sinclair’s fitness to be a broadcast licensee.”
Not surprisingly, the Biden administration is trying to hide Sohn’s speech-suppressing radicalism. As the Wall Street Journal editorial board noted: “The White House last month hailed Ms. Sohn as ‘one of the nation’s leading public advocates for open, affordable, and democratic communications networks.’ Translation: She favors deploying the agency’s regulatory power to shackle broadband providers and silence conservative voices.”
That’s what this is about, after all: the ongoing effort of the Left to censor the Right. They’ll never say so in words, but leftists have come to realize that they can’t compete in the marketplace of ideas. Their policies — from open borders to defunding the police to Critical Race Theory to green theology to gender fluidity to the permanent pandemic — are poisonous to most Americans. And so, all they can do is silence us. Or at least try to.
Unfortunately, when it comes to suppressing speech, the Left has been largely successful. The traditional print media has long been in its camp. Same with the television networks. And with their fellow travelers in Big Tech and social media now actively stifling conservative voices — a practice that our Mark Alexander calls the redlining of free speech — the remaining outposts of Liberty are cable news and conservative talk radio, both of which are regulated by the FCC.
That’s why Sohn’s nomination to an FCC commissionership is so important. And why Republicans must vigorously oppose it.
“By refusing to accept Ms. Sohn’s nomination,” writes Donald Trump’s former acting attorney general, Matt Whitaker, “Republicans can do something powerful to defend liberty and free speech. Perhaps they will even prove Ms. Sohn right: Republicans aren’t all insane, particularly when they reject candidates for high executive branch positions who simply don’t fit the bill.”