90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Here Is My Nomination For The Darwin Awards...

FCC Rejects Petition that Would Have ‘Dangerously’ Curtailed Free Speech

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Office of General Counsel and Media Bureau rejected a petition by the progressive Free Press on Monday to “weaponize” the agency against broadcasters and conservatives to censor political speech.

Free Press recently petitioned the FCC to censor broadcasters from showing President Donald Trump’s press conferences on the coronavirus outbreak.

“When the president tells dangerous lies about a public health emergency, broadcasters have a choice: don’t air them, or put those lies in context with disclaimers noting that they may be untrue and are unverified,” Free Press wrote in its petition. “And certainly the FCC has a duty to rein in radio broadcasters that seed confusion with lies and disinformation.”

The FCC denied the petition in a letter to the Free Press, contending that the proposal “misconstrues the Commission’s rules and seeks remedies that would dangerously curtail the freedom of the press embodied in the First Amendment.”
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr told Breitbart News in an interview last week that the petition is a “dangerous and sweeping attempt by the left to weaponize the FCC against broadcasters and conservatives and politicians.” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement Monday that under his administration, the agency will continue to protect free speech.

Pai said:

Under my leadership, the FCC has always stood firmly in defense of Americans’ First Amendment freedoms, including freedom of the press. And so long as I am Chairman of this agency, we always will. The federal government will not—and never should—investigate broadcasters for their editorial judgments simply because a special interest group is angry at the views being expressed on the air as well as those expressing them. In short, we will not censor the news. Instead, consistent with the First Amendment, we leave it to broadcasters to determine for themselves how to cover this national emergency, including live events involving our nation’s leaders.

In its letter to Free Press, the FCC concluded that:

The Dumbest Nurse In America Threatens to Deny Trump Supporter Coronavirus Treatment

“We have to decide who gets the vent.”

A self-proclaimed registered nurse took to Twitter to suggest that she would not give someone emergency medical treatment for coronavirus if he was a Trump supporter.

The nurse was responding to a man called George S. Martan who posted a photo of himself wearing a face mask with ‘Trump 2020’ embroidered onto it.

“My wife sewed this face mask today to protect me from the Wuhan Virus and show support for President Trump,” commented the man.

“I’ll see you in ER. Please wear your mask so when we have to decide who gets the vent, it’ll be easier. Thanks,” responded Erika Waters, who describes herself as a registered nurse practitioner in her bio.

Waters has several anti-Trump hashtags in her bio, including #Resist, #GunReform and #BLM (Black Lives Matter).

She immediately faced the wrath of other Twitter users, including one who pointed out, “Medical homicide via negligence is the third leading cause of death in the United States.”

Others tagged the Florida medical board in an attempt to alert health authorities to the threat, with one tweeting, “Hope your medical malpractice carrier doesn’t see this.”

Waters later claimed that people were targeting the wrong nurse with the same name, remarking, “Your conduct is just as horrid as mine while you are doxxing every nurse named Erika Waters.”She also subsequently apologized to Martan, tweeting, “I was not thinking, obviously, when I suggested you wear your mask into the ER where I work. I can’t explain why I tweeted that and hope you’ll forgive me but understand if you don’t.”