President Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, was widely expected to make life more difficult for media organizations that weren’t aligned with the commander in chief’s agenda.
In his first week leading the powerful agency that oversees national communications, Carr has done just that, reviving complaints that alleged liberal media bias. Throughout the campaign, Trump railed against certain broadcasters, saying the FCC should yank their broadcast licenses.
ABC, NBC and CBS have all felt Trump’s scorn.
On Wednesday, Carr revived complaints that had been filed against those three. One targeted NBC for featuring former Vice President Kamala Harris in a “Saturday Night Live” skit four days before the November election, saying the network wasn’t providing equal access to Trump. A second complaint took issue with ABC News’ handling of the September Trump-Harris debate. Trump complained that ABC anchors were unfair to him.
The previous FCC chair, Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, had dismissed four complaints in her final week in office, citing 1st Amendment protections for broadcasters. In addition to the ABC and NBC complaints, she axed one against CBS for an edit to a “60 Minutes” Harris interview as well as a request from liberals to sanction Fox Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch and his son, Lachlan, for Fox News’ amplification of Trump’s 2020 election lies.
Although Carr went along with the dismissal of the complaint against the Murdochs, he swiftly restored the others to the commission’s docket.
Daniel Suhr, president of the conservative Chicago-based Center for American Rights, which filed the CBS, NBC and ABC station complaints alleging media bias, said he felt like “a legal Lazarus,” after this week’s shift at the FCC.
“I applaud the chairman’s decision to resurrect the complaints and make sure the commission does its due diligence to review what we feel are very serious concerns about bias,” Suhr said in an interview with The Times. “We are trying to bring accountability back to these broadcasters to restore the public’s trust in them.”
Carr, a 46-year old lawyer from Washington, D.C., who has served on the commission since 2017, also dismantled the FCC’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. He signed an order eliminating the promotion of inclusion from the FCC’s strategic plan and stripping money for diversity programs from the agency’s budget.
“President Trump’s leadership on this will deliver great results for the American people,” Carr said in a statement. “Today, I am announcing that I am ending the FCC’s promotion of DEI and will focus the agency’s work on competently carrying out the FCC’s mission, as defined by Congress.”
The moves have thrust the FCC into the center of a fierce debate over whether Trump will flex his power to punish media outlets he doesn’t like. Some media experts have worried that Trump’s rhetoric, combined with federal regulators falling into line, could have a chilling effect that results in less critical press coverage.
CBS and its parent company, Paramount Global, are feeling the squeeze.
Last fall, Trump backed out of a planned interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” interview, objecting to the newsmagazine’s plans to fact-check his statements. After Harris, the Democratic nominee, appeared on the program, Trump complained that CBS News had deceitfully edited a clip of her interview to position her in a better light. The network showed Harris giving different responses to a question about President Biden’s administration’s efforts to stop the war in the Middle East.
Trump quickly filed a $10-billion lawsuit in Texas against CBS over the clip, calling it “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference.” First Amendment experts have called Trump’s lawsuit a stunt.
CBS News denied that it manipulated Harris’ words. CBS said “60 Minutes” producers gave an excerpt of the Harris interview to the network’s Sunday morning “Face the Nation,” program, which “used a longer section of her answer than [what was] on ’60 Minutes.’ Same question. Same answer. But a different portion of the response.”
“When we edit any interview, whether a politician, an athlete, or movie star, we strive to be clear, accurate and on point,” CBS said in a statement. “The portion of her answer on 60 Minutes was more succinct.”
The issue has created a headache for Paramount, which is seeking federal approval for its proposed $8-billion takeover by David Ellison’s Skydance Media. Some analysts expect the FCC complaint to pose a speed bump for Paramount and Skydance as the two firms push to finalize the merger this spring, giving the Ellison family control of one of Hollywood’s oldest film studios and networks.
The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that Paramount executives were considering settling the case to facilitate the merger. Paramount and Skydance declined to comment.
Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th U.S. president on Monday.
(Morry Gash / Associated Press)
After the election, the FCC’s Carr told Fox News that he would closely scrutinize the pending Paramount-Skydance union.
As part of its complaint against CBS, Suhr’s Center for American Rights also asked the FCC to review Skydance’s relationship with the Chinese technology and media firm Tencent, which has invested in Ellison’s company. Some in Congress have called for an additional review.
Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chairman of the House China Select Committee, said Wednesday that the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. should take a look.
“We’ve heard from multiple Hollywood executives about rampant self-censorship designed to curry favor with the Chinese Communist Party,” the Michigan Republican said. “Given that just this month, the Department of Defense designated Tencent as a Chinese military company, CFIUS should closely scrutinize the proposed merger.”
NBC tried to blunt Trump’s fury over Harris’ appearance on “Saturday Night Live” by giving him free air time during a NASCAR race and prominent football game to try to level the playing field.
Walt Disney Co.’s ABC television station in Philadelphia was the target of the Center for American Rights’ third complaint. The station, WPVI-TV, transmitted ABC News’ widely watched September debate, Harris and Trump’s sole face-off.
In a separate dispute, Disney last month agreed to pay $1 million for Trump legal fees and donate another $15 million for Trump’s future presidential library to settle a lawsuit Trump brought against ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos after the journalist asserted during an on-air interview that a civil court jury had found Trump “liable for rape” in a civil case. Jurors had actually determined Trump was liable for “sexual abuse.”
The settlement set off alarm bells for press freedom advocates. Some felt Disney quickly settled the Stephanopoulos case to curry favor with the incoming Trump administration.
Maya Rudolph, left, and Kamala Harris on “Saturday Night Live.”
(Will Heath / NBC)
Rosenworcel, in a statement earlier this month, said the FCC should guard against becoming “the president’s speech police.”
She did not elaborate on her decision to dismiss the complaint against Fox.
Murdoch critics lodged a complaint with the FCC after Fox News paid $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems over lies spread on Fox News about its voting machines during the 2020 election. The group argued the 93-year-old mogul from Australia and his son Lachlan, the chief executive of Fox, lacked the moral character needed to hold broadcast licenses.
Patrick Webre, the FCC’s acting bureau chief for enforcement, wrote in a Wednesday order that Rosenworcel’s dismissals of the ABC, CBS and NBC cases were “issued prematurely based on an insufficient investigatory record for the station-specific conduct at issue.”
Despite the action, it’s not clear whether the complaints will actually move forward.
FCC bureau officials now must investigate them. Ultimately, the full commission would vote on any enforcement action.
Former top FCC official Blair Levin, now an analyst for New Street Research, wrote Thursday in a note to clients that it’s rare for the government to revoke a TV station license.
“Despite the bluster from the President that the companies should lose their licenses, we think the risk of that happening is exceedingly low,” Levin said in the report.