Joe Barton Addresses TV Industry Group, Calls for Legislation (CBS)

In the wake of CBS News' "60 Minutes" controversy, an influential Republican on Tuesday said he wants to convene a Capitol Hill hearing on TV news operations after the Nov. 2 election.

Rep. Joe Barton (news, bio, voting record) (R-Texas), chair of the House Commerce Committee, told a meeting of the TV engineering trade group MSTV in Washington that broadcast network news divisions "need to have safeguards to prevent reporters from infusing their opinions into news reports."

The lawmaker said he wanted to hear from execs of all the nets -- not just CBS -- and threatened to introduce legislation requiring TV news operations to impose safeguards against partisan bias seeping into reports. He backed off the threat of legislation when pressed for specifics.

In the article, Mr. Barton goes on to insult broadcast journalists wholesale, on account of the cBS affair. He was the industry group Maximum Service Television's keynote speaker at their lunch hour on Tuesday.

I'm willing to give my Congressman the benefit of the doubt, however, if this blurb is true, then Mr. Barton's nastygram is as good as in the mail.

Sure, CBS "journalism" is positively malignant. But,THEY DON'T and MUST NEVER ANSWER TO GOVERNMENT or we as a people will NEVER hear anything LESS than propaganda, or MORE than what the government wants us to hear, ever again. Joe Barton, and every elected official, must answer to the press, corrupt as they may be, not the other way around.

There are laws against forgery, falsification of military documents,etc., which can be applied to the CBS documents

I respectfully disagree with that contention. I would entertain a law that provides penalties for using forged documents (even forged letters from a lomg-lost lover, not just government documents) with the purpose of harming the reputation of a candidate for office. It would cut down on the biased reporting, but it might stifle the use of forged corroboration.

Below is a partial list of threads having analysis of statutes for forgery, fraud, government documents, government seals, false representation of government authority, etc. The closest statute I have seen, that prohibits the use of forged documents to affect the voters' perception, is a New Hampshire statute, 666:7. A link to it is at post #710 of thread 1221349.

I made multiple posts in most of the threads linked below, and a thorough review requires reading at least forward from the linked point. The "1221349" thread has some interesting "parallel possibilitiess," including the forgery of an official document that showed a clear connection between Mohammed Atta and Iraq, i.e., if authentic, Iraq had a direct hand in 9/11.

None of the analysis relates to election law or what might constitute illegal or criminal coordination between the DNC (and/or the Kerry campaign), 527's (Texans for Truth), and a broadcast operation (CBS).

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1211953/posts?page=72#72 <-- Sep 10
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1216465/posts?page=133#133 <-- read from #133
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1217992/posts?page=55#55 <-- Nos. 55,72,101,113
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/506.html <-- 18 USC 506 - re: #113 above
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1218457/posts <-- See #6 (by ScottFromSpokane)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1219685/posts?page=37#37 <-- read from #37
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1221349/posts?page=701#701 <-- Atta/Iraq
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1223146/posts?page=42#42 <-- 18 USC 1343

The below statutes and rules relate to federal election law. In my opinion, statutory violations are more likely found there, for the CBS/Kerry/DNC matter involving the Killian memo affair.

http://www.fec.gov/finance_law.html <-- FEC - Campaign Finance Law Resources
http://www.fec.gov/law/feca/feca.pdf <-- 2 USC 431 et seq. (**MOST USEFUL**)
http://www.fec.gov/pdf/cfr11.pdf <-- 11 CFR, FEC Rules

I would entertain a law that provides penalties for using forged documents (even forged letters from a lomg-lost lover, not just government documents) with the purpose of harming the reputation of a candidate for office.

Upon further pondering this, I gotta take an opposing position. It seems to me that a by-product of legislation like this, the unintended consequence, if you will, might be to make news organizations way too skittish to present material without consulting their legal departments. The legalities might outweigh the facts, if you will, and cause legitimate stories to be buried.

Politicians deserve NO special legal tools to defend themselves with. Heck, leave'em a little exposed, and it might be the better to cull the herd of undesirables running for office.

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