There's A Large Part Of The Voting Public That Would Prefer Congress Shut Up

Senator Jay Rockefeller expresses his desire for censorship...

There’s a part of Senator Jay Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, that would like to see Fox News Channel and MSNBC vanish.


At a Senate committee hearing about television retransmission consent on Wednesday, Mr. Rockefeller spoke broadly about the ways he believes television is ailing, and in doing so, he singled out the “endless barking” of cable news.


He said: “There’s a little bug inside of me which wants to get the F.C.C. to say to Fox and to MSNBC, ‘Out. Off. End. Goodbye.’ It would be a big favor to political discourse; to our ability to do our work here in Congress; and to the American people, to be able to talk with each other and have some faith in their government and, more importantly, in their future.”


There is little the Federal Communications Commission can say about Fox News or MSNBC since the channels are on cable, not delivered over the broadcast airwaves.

First of all, it's an asinine statement to make, because elected officials should not be advocating shutting down free expression. More to the point, what Rockefeller seems to find offensive is that news institutions are undermining faith in government... as if our governmental institutions, led by Congress, don't do that all by their lonesome.