The Threat to Freedom of Speech in the USA

From the Desk of:David Martin, Executive Vice President



MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER
6/8/2010


The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a 47-page bureaucratic plan for the “Reinvention of Journalism” that outlines a series of taxes that would stifle free speech and silence conservatives.
MRC’s Vice President for Business and Culture, Dan Gainor, who helped break this shocking story, says the report contains the word “tax” 95 times and is part of “an extensive attempt by the Obama Administration to seize control of the press.”
And the conservative media are directly in the crosshairs of the Obama team. The FTC paper includes…

* A “Drudge Tax” on news aggregators like The Drudge Report who stand on the front lines of the struggle to expose the Leftist agenda.
* A “journalism division” of AmeriCorps -- forcing taxpayers to pay the Obama Administration to train up the next generation of liberal journalists!
* A direct Journalism Bailout fund to “help pay the salary of every journalist” -- YOU AND I will be forced to fund the liberal media!
* A 5% tax on consumer electronics (like the iPad)
* Possible taxes on cell phones, television and radio that would all be part of a massive $35 billion “Citizenship Media Fund”

This new FTC document combined with the FCC’s moves to impose a “Fairness Doctrine” pose an ominous threat to conservative speech that would empower the Obama administration to control the dissemination of information while imposing punitive taxes on ideological opponents. We simply must respond and say “NO!” to Obama’s efforts to censor, regulate, tax and control our free speech!
Next week, the FTC will be holding a workshop on the “Future of Journalism” as a follow up to the release of its 47-page “Drudge Tax” proposal. We want to rally tens of thousands of citizens to take action in two specific ways to oppose this effort to control conservative speech:
+ + Action #1 -- Forward this message to your friends
We have your signature on file for our "Free Speech Alliance" petition which is your unequivocal opposition to "any and all efforts to censor, limit, or restrain free speech -- on conservative or Christian talk radio, on the internet or anywhere else.” Please forward this message to your friends and ask them to join you in signing this petition by going here.
+ + Action #2 -- Tell the FTC you oppose its efforts to control speech
The FTC is accepting comments in advance on next week’s meeting on June 15. Please go here to let the FTC know what you think about their “Reinventing Journalism” document and this effort to censor and tax conservative speech and our free speech rights in general. (Note: Although this site mentions a March 9 meeting, this is the link provided by the FTC for comments on the June 15 meeting.)
For more background information, please see Dan Gainor’s excellent article.
This is precisely why Brent Bozell launched our MRC Action team -- so that we could get the word out to hundreds of thousands of citizens as soon as a threat like this arises. Your continued support of the MRC makes this possible! Thank you for standing with us and for taking action.

David
P.S. The FTC wants to tax conservative speech and then use our tax dollars to both train and pay the salaries of the liberal media! We have just one week to respond to the Obama Administration’s latest effort to censor, stifle -- and even tax -- conservative free speech. Please take action by encouraging your friends to sign MRC's petition and posting your comments to the FTC.