Gigi Sohn was nominated twice by President Biden to fill an empty seat on the five-member Federal Communications Commission board. She announced this week she had notified the White House she was withdrawing her name and thus ending a 16-month political battle in the Senate over her nomination.
Noelle Garnier, speaking for the National Religious Broadcasters, tells AFN the faith-based communications group was concerned about its First Amendment rights if a left-wing activist became a regulator of public airwaves.
“We were seriously concerned by Ms. Sohn's demonstrated hostility to broadcasters,” Garnier says, “and her openness to regulatory authority to censor ideas that she personally disagrees with.”
In other words, NRB feared the liberal lesbian would abuse the regulatory power of the FCC to censor content she views as dangerous hate speech.
And her hatred of the Right was no secret. Long before the nominee sat in front of a Senate committee, where she assured Republicans she would miraculously be fair and impartial, Sohn had described Fox News as “state-sponsored propaganda” and accused the news network of “destroying democracy” in her social media posts.
At a key Senate hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz showed those Twitter comments, and challenged Sohn to explain them, in what was probably the political murder of her nomination.
After Sohn pointed out Fox News is not regulated by the FCC, meaning it cannot be punished for its content, Cruz asked her to explain why she used the phrase “state-sponsored propaganda” to describe it.
“Because ‘state sponsored’ suggests,” Cruz told her, “that, at the FCC, you would use state regulatory power to go after them and silence them.”
“What I meant by that – and again I regret the tone of that – was they were very, very, very close to the Trump administration,” Sohn replied.
“Is MSNBC very, very close to the Biden administration?” Cruz challenged her.
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Sohn said. “I don’t watch it.”
Media Research Center spokesman Tim Graham tells AFN it is true the FCC doesn’t police cable outlets but that doesn’t matter to a Fox News-hating Leftist.
“The Feds want to police misinformation,” he says. “Gigi Sohn was not the person who you wanted to be the top cop.”
In the mind of Leftists, however, the "far right" is always a danger if "misinformation" and "hate speech" and "propaganda" are allowed on college campuses, social media, cable news, and radio airwaves. So it was no surprise Sohn called her withdrawal from the nomination "a sad day for our country and our democracy."
