The Financial Post reports in its Thursday edition CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais lectured Wednesday on "journalistic independence" and "freedom of expression." The Post's Terence Corcoran writes that in a statement, and without naming names, Mr. Blais laced into Kevin Crull, the boss of Bell Media, for allegedly "manipulating news coverage" of the CRTC regulatory activities at CTV. Mr. Crull is said to have called up CTV News president Wendy Freeman to instruct her to make sure Mr. Blais did not appear in any further CTV news shows that day. Mr. Blais had already appeared that day on BNN, which did not sit well with Mr. Crull. That would be no surprise, since Mr. Blais has been inserting regulatory skewers into various Bell enterprises for many months, and his latest -- imposing pick-and-pay TV and other rules -- was the news topic of the day. Perhaps Mr. Crull had had enough of being lectured, instructed and regulated by Mr. Blais. Mr. Corcoran figuers that if that was the case, Mr. Crull was perfectly within his rights to poke his nose into his company's newsrooms, something that has been going on since newspapers were invented. If editors do not like interfering owners, they can quit or get fired.