Sen Rockefeller rips news media

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) blasted the media industry at a hearing on broadcast television retransmission consent.

Although the topic of the hearing was supposed to be the recent rash of fights between broadcasters and cable operators over distribution agreements that have in many cases left consumers in the lurch, Chairman Rockefeller took aim at cable news and the entertainment industry. He said that instead of a watchdog media, "we have endless barking of a 24-hour news cycle ... journalism that is always ravenous for the next rumor but insufficiently hungry for the facts that can nourish something called our democracy."

The senator also took aim at Fox News Channel and MSNBC and suggested he wouldn't mind if the Federal Communications Commission could make them both go away. "I hunger for quality news, I'm tired of the right and left," he said.

Of course, as both Fox and MSNBC are cable channels, the FCC has little regulatory power over their content.