Is Free Speech Being Muzzled in America?

The president who is sitting in the Oval Office right now promised to bring us "hope" and "change." Barack Obama is keeping at least one of those promises: change. But it's not the kind of change millions of you voted for.

This nation is being fundamentally transformed; the president promised us in his own words he would transform it. What we didn't know was how and just how much.

One way this administration and its helpers are doing it is by systematically stripping away our right to free speech. Yes, the president and other progressives profess to be the saviors of our First Amendment rights.

But when you pull back the curtain, you will see that free speech is being eradicated for controlled speech: Control over the media; control over the Internet; control over you.

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SUBTITLE: September 2008, two months before election day.

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UNIDENTIFIED NEWS ANCHOR: Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign is asking Missouri law enforcement to target anyone who lies or runs a misleading television ad.

UNIDENTIFIED NEWS REPORTER: Prosecutors and sheriffs from across Missouri are joining something called the "Barack Obama truth squad."

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BECK (VOICE-OVER): Two months before President Obama was elected, free speech was reportedly under attack in Missouri. His campaign was accused of roping local prosecutors into threatening charges against anyone who spread lies against Obama or ran misleading TV ads about him:

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JENNIFER JOYCE, ST. LOUIS CIRCUIT ATTORNEY: We want to keep his campaign focused on issues. We're here to respond to any character attack.

BOB MCCULLOCH, ST. LOUIS COUNTY PROSECUTOR: They're not going to tell the truth and somebody's got to step up and say, wait a minute.

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BECK (VOICE-OVER): Who was directing the president's campaign at the time in Missouri? Ah, Buffy Wicks. You might remember her from this program. She now works in the White House as the deputy director of the Office of Public Engagement. She's the one who helped orchestrate the infamous NEA call which asked the art community to produce pro-Obama art:

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BUFFY WICKS, OFFICE OF PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT: When we were thinking about how do we take a lot of this energy that's out there, how do we translate folks who have just been engaged in electoral politics, and engage them in really the process of governing.

YOSI SERGANT, FORMER NEA COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: This is just the beginning. We are just now learning how to really bring this community together to speak with the government with and what that looks like legally.

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BECK (VOICE-OVER): The head of the NEA is also one of President Obama's biggest supporters, Rocco Landesman. He promised just a few days ago to advocate for the president's agenda and called him, "The most powerful writer since Julius Caesar." By the way, Caesar was a man who took the republic and turned it into an empire, but I digress.

Along with Missouri, the Obama campaign in 2008 also sent threatening letters to several news organizations in Pennsylvania and Ohio, demanding that they stop airing NRA ads exposing Obama's guns stance:

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KARL RUSCH: And now I learn that Barack Obama supports a huge new tax on my guns and ammos. That he voted to ban virtually all deer hunting ammunition. Where is this guy from?

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BECK (VOICE-OVER): The letters were sent by the campaign's general counsel, Bob Bauer. They read, "You need not air this advertisement. You have a duty to protect the public from false, misleading or deceptive advertising. We request you immediately cease airing this."

Let's revisit that: The media has a duty to prevent an opposing argument from being heard? Well, let's ask ourselves this question: Who is Bob Bauer, who's is trying to stifle free speech?

What a coincidence: He's the husband of the Mao Tse Tung-loving White House communications director, Anita Dunn. Dunn has been front and center in the White House attempt to lock out Fox News.

But it doesn't stop there. This program recently learned and exposed that Bob Bauer is emerging as the top contender to replace Greg Craig as White House counsel. Bauer threatened stations in Pennsylvania and Ohio that their FCC license would be taken away if they ran the NRA ads. Wow. Now, he will be the chief counsel?

And let me ask you this: Would the FCC ever actually do that? Well, maybe not in the past, but the Obama-appointed chairman of the FCC, Julius Genachowski, assured Congress in June at his confirmation that he would never pushed to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, that's a policy to control what the media broadcast:

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JULIUS GENACHOWSKI, FCC CHAIRMAN: Senator, I don't support reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine.

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BECK (VOICE-OVER): That's interesting, because about a month later, he did appoint Mark Lloyd to be the FCC's diversity czar, who said this:

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MARK LLOYD, FCC DIVERSITY 'CZAR': What we're really saying is that the Fairness Doctrine is not enough. Put some hard structural rules in place that are going to result in fairness.

Who is going to step down, so someone else can have power?

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BECK (VOICE-OVER): So the Fairness Doctrine doesn't go far enough. Oh, and he had some other very new American ideas. One of Genachowski's strongest backers is the radical organization Free Press. That's the one pressing for fundamental transformation of the media today as we know it:

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CRAIG AARON, FREE PRESS: So, we need new policies to support media, and I hate to break it to some of you, but the government is going to have to be involved.

What if, instead, we took a few thousand AmeriCorps jobs and gave them to news-gathering organizations? And why not start retraining veteran journalists, the ones with those deep Rolodexes of sources, in new media skills?

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BECK (VOICE-OVER): Free Press co-founder, Robert McChesney, vowed last year that capitalism needs to be taken apart brick by brick. What else does he believe in? In his own words:

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ROBERT MCCHESNEY, FREE PRESS CO-FOUNDER: I think it's absolutely indefensible to allow this level of concentration in the media industries. I think we've got to come up with a viable antitrust plan to break up these media — concentrated media conglomerates.

It's simply, there's no justification for having firms like Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Break it up.

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BECK (VOICE-OVER): Hmm. But does this man have any influence over Obama? Listen to the president's words:

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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: When a company, like Clear Channel, starts gobbling up all the radio stations or, you know, Rupert Murdoch starts having his eyes on a bunch of different media outlets, they can outbid a lot of small — smaller outlets. What I've said is that I'm committed to having the FCC review what our current policies are in terms of media diversification.

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BECK (VOICE-OVER): They sound eerily similar, don't they? Oh, and by the way, they know do each other: While McChesney is not on the president's team, he has had several meetings at the White House.

So, is this administration aiming for a government-controlled media? One former Obama "czar" hopes so:

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VAN JONES, FORMER GREEN JOBS 'CZAR': Once we are in that situation where people who we agree with more than we don't are governing, the role of progressive media could change. You cannot have an opposition movement without opposition media.

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BECK (VOICE-OVER): We know the president is also hoping to control diversity online:

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OBAMA: The most important thing we can probably do is to preserve the diversity that's emerging through the Internet.

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BECK (VOICE-OVER): Independent financial regulators are now even talking about policing social network sites like Facebook:

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RICHARD KETCHUM, FINRA CEO: You know, with all of our kids, they don't talk by phones. They talk through the Internet and they talk through Facebook. We can — there are great problems for regulatory standpoint now if that's being used as a sales tool because there's not a good audit trail. We got to get there.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: So, you're saying brokers are using Facebook to pitch financial products and you need to look at that as a regulatory issue?

KETCHUM: Exactly.

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BECK (VOICE-OVER): The president, along with his FCC chair and others are big proponents of something called Net neutrality, an effort to protect the voice of the working class that has never been heard clearer than right now:

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OBAMA: And that starts with an open Internet. I will take a backseat to no one in my commitment to network neutrality.

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BECK (VOICE-OVER): Who's for Net neutrality? Only the little people, the global corporations like Google, Amazon and Microsoft.

Who exactly are we protecting?

Then, media experts tell us Obama's proposal for an open Internet is really a cover for giving progressive organizations and government entities access to the power of the Internet, courtesy of the taxpayers.

And then there is the fight to expand public broadcasting in an attempt to slowly silence the private media. Oh, they'll use an emergency, like the economy or the collapsing newspapers. Newspapers, of course, have to be saved.

So, is the Obama administration trying to control our information?

OBAMA: Part of what I want to do is to expand the diversity of voices in media or have policies that encourage that.

BECK (VOICE-OVER): Is he trying to silence your right to free speech?

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JOHN PODESTA, FORMER OBAMA TRANSITION TEAM CO-CHAIR: There is a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for congressional action and I think we'll see the president do that.

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BECK (VOICE-OVER): This, America, is a question that only you can decide.

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One of the groups behind all this is Free Press.

I was struck first by their motto: "Free Press. Reform media. Transform democracy."

I didn't realize democracy needed transforming. But anyway, you'll remember that Free Press is the group pushing net neutrality, which would take the Internet out of the hands of private business and put it into the hands of government. That would create a level-playing field, which would destroy the free market that... created the Internet. But hey, you know how those evil corporations are: Always trying to be successful and make money. So evil.

Free Press is also behind SaveTheNews.org, which is "leading the search for new public policies to save journalism and to promote a robust free press in America."

Hmm, policies? Policies like a government bailout for journalism? How exactly does that "promote a robust free press"?

But on to Public Broadcasting. Executive director Josh Silver's position paper "Public Media's Moment" spells out to President Obama how to take advantage: "The growing crisis facing commercial journalism and public media's unique ability to address it... makes such reform all the more urgent... you have a rare opportunity to achieve real change and reinvent public media."

Adding: "Just as the economic crisis has put an end to free market fundamentalism, so too should the failure of commercial media to adequately serve the public interest end the myth that government has no role in fulfilling society's information needs."

You see how the White House's "Fox isn't a real news organization" comments make more sense now, right?

Silver calls on President Obama to create a White House commission on public media to provide policy recommendations. And how do we pay for it? Silver points out that currently only $400 million per year goes to public media. He recommends a media trust fund, starting with $50 billion, more money from Congress or — wait for it — a tax on electronics:

"A tax of 0.5 percent of the purchase price for every home electronic device: multimedia players, cable and satellite set-top boxes, video game systems, televisions, etc. those devices that entertain America would in turn be supporting programming to inform, educate and enlighten. And the fee would be paid by those consumers with the means to spend on new electronics."

Those consumers "with the means"? That means "rich" people. Higher taxes and this will not increase the deficit by one thin dime.

Step one: Shut down the speech they don't like. But, since nature abhors a vacuum, the question is: What do they fill the space with?

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