Is TV News ‘The Enemy?’ Don’t Ask FCC’s Pai

Well, that was a disappointment. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who has set himself up as a champion of the First Amendment, failed to stand up for TV news at the Senate Commerce Committee hearing this week. Senator Tom Udall (D-N.M.) asked him if he agreed with President Trump’s tweet that CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC are “the enemy of the American people.”

Pai evaded the question. First, he said, he didn’t “want to wade into the larger political debates” and, then, when pressed, said weakly that everybody is entitled to First Amendment protections.

Pai’s answer should have been simple: “No, Senator, I don’t.” He did not have to elaborate. Not only would that have assured us that Pai is a thinking man and the free press advocate we believe him to be, it would also have assured us that the Pai FCC will be independent of the White House.

Pai cast some doubt on that independence, by the way. In the questioning by Udall, Pai also refused to say what was discussed in his meetings with Trump before his elevation to chairman in January and his renomination to another term last week. He acted as if there was some prohibition against it.

Upon further questioning, he did say that he had not discussed the AT&T-Time Warner merger with any White House official. He also offered some boilerplate on how he would decide issues strictly on the paper record without political considerations. That’s an unbelievable statement, of course, but the kind that has long been acceptable in Washington.

Yes, we were disappointed. But we are going to give Pai a pass because he is still new to his job. The trick of these oversight hearings is to say as little as possible just as you would if confronted by hostile lawyers at a deposition. There is no penalty for saying too little, especially if the questioning is as half-hearted as Udall’s was. But you can get in trouble for saying too much.

As a reporter years ago, I remember a hearing in which then-Commissioner Andrew Barrett suggested that pornography on TV was OK because a lot of people seemed to like it. Wrong answer, even though it honestly reflected his hands-off approach to regulating programming. As I recall, Barrett had to walk that one back — quickly.

In this case, Pai won’t have to do any explaining, except maybe to himself.

Harry A. Jessell is editor of TVNewsCheck. He can be contacted at 973-701-1067 or here. You can read earlier columns here.