Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is using his bully pulpit to push back against coverage of the U.S. military action in Iran that his boss President Trump doesn’t like, marking an extraordinary escalation in his clashes with the media.
On Saturday, Carr posted a message on X suggesting TV stations could lose their government licenses to use the public airwaves if they “don’t operate in the public interest.”
Underneath his statement, Carr shared a social media post from Trump, who complained about the New York Times and Wall Street Journal stories on the five refueling tankers were hit during an Iranian missile strike on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
Carr seized on Trump’s missive to issue a warning to TV outlets, which are frequently threatened by the president when he is angry at their coverage.
It’s the latest attempt by the FCC chair to apply pressure on media companies that irritate Trump with critical coverage of his administration.
Since becoming FCC chairman last year, Carr has repeatedly threatened to use the levers of power he has to punish TV and radio stations when they get in Trump’s crosshairs. His behavior has alarmed free speech advocates.
“Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions — also known as the fake news — have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr wrote, without providing evidence to back up his claims. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”
Carr’s threats are based on his assertions that said he wants to enforce the FCC’s public interest obligation for broadcasters that use the airwaves. He made similar remarks in the fall, which prompted two major TV station groups to keep ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air for a week due to remarks the host made regarding slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have repeatedly attacked news organizations for any reporting that doesn’t say the war in Iran is anything but a rousing success.
On Friday, Hegseth said took aim at CNN and said “the sooner David Ellison takes over that network the better.”
Ellison, the chief executive of Paramount who, along with his father, has forged strong ties to the White House, will have control over CNN in addition to CBS if the company’s deal to acquire the news outlet’s parent Warner Bros. Discovery is completed.
Carr made the appointment of an ombudsman for CBS News a condition to approve Ellison’s Skydance Partners deal to acquire Paramount last year. Paramount also drew scrutiny over its controversial decision to pay $16 million to settle Trump’s legal salvo against “60 Minutes” over the editing of an interview with his 2024 opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Most legal analysts viewed the case as frivolous.
The FCC has no jurisdiction over CNN, which is why most of Carr’s barbs are aimed at ABC, CBS and NBC, which air on local TV stations. He once wrote on X, “More Americans trust gas station sushi than the legacy national media.”
Trump said in a social media post Sunday that he was “thrilled” with Carr’s remarks and would support his efforts to go after what he called “Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations.”
“They get Billions of Dollars of FREE American Airwaves, and use it to perpetuate LIES, both in News and almost all of their Shows, including the Late Night Morons, who get gigantic Salaries for horrible ratings,” Trump wrote.
Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a Washington-based public interest communications attorney, believes Carr’s conduct and threats violate the 1st Amendment, adding that any serious attempt to revoke licenses would be tied up in legal challenges.
“Even if he started to try to deny a license renewal as quickly as he could, Brendan Carr would be long gone before that case would be over,” Schwartzman said. “The law intentionally sets out a very steep burden for the FCC to deny a license renewal; the process takes many years, during which time the licensee continues to operate normally under ‘continuing operating authority.’”
Carr’s remarks Saturday drew immediate blowback from Democrats and 1st Amendment advocates, noting the FCC’s role does not include policing the free press.
“Once again, this FCC pretends it has the power to control news coverage,” FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez said Monday in a statement. “In reality, the FCC has vanishingly little power over national news networks. It licenses local broadcast stations, not networks, and no licenses are up for renewal until 2028.”
Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom weighed in as well, posting, “If Trump doesn’t like your coverage of the war, his FCC will pull your broadcast license. That is flagrantly unconstitutional.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), usually a reliable voice of support for the Trump administration, expressed his concerns over Carr’s remarks.
“I’m a big supporter of the 1st Amendment,” Johnson told Fox News on Sunday. “I do not like the heavy hand of government no matter who’s wielding it. I’d rather the federal government stay out of the private sector as much as possible.”
Gomez added that while attempts to pull licenses border on folly, Carr’s threats and attacks on the media can create a chilling effect and erode the public’s confidence in the press.
“Over the past year, this FCC has attacked the media as part of a years-long campaign by this Administration and its allies to discredit factual, independent coverage while blaming the press for growing public distrust,” Gomez said. “Meanwhile, it is the FCC’s own credibility and public trust that are rapidly eroding.”
Trump is not the first president to target TV station licenses in response to negative news coverage. At the height of the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, Richard Nixon’s allies attempted to challenge the TV licenses for three stations owned at the time by the Washington Post.
The effort didn’t get far.
The last Los Angeles outlet to lose its broadcast license was KHJ in 1987, when the station was part of RKO General, a media company owned by the General Tire and Rubber Co. The case was related to corporate malfeasance and not broadcast content on the stations.
The process to revoke the RKO licenses took seven years from the moment the FCC voted in favor of the move.
“Since then, only small mom-and-pop radio stations have been litigated,” Schwartzman said. “The cases nearly always involve lying to the government, felony convictions or failure to pay regulatory fees. In one recent case, a small owner convicted of tax evasion still kept his license.”
There would be other logistical hurdles to the FCC making good on Carr’s threats.
As Gomez noted, Carr’s FCC only has regulatory control over the TV stations that carry the network signals. If stations were drop network programming for any reason, they could violate their affiliation contracts and lose the right to carry NFL football and other content that delivers big ratings and revenue.
Sinclair Broadcast Group wanted Kimmel to apologize to Kirk‘s family and contribute to his organization Turning Point USA before putting the host’s late night show on the air.
That did not happen and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” returned to Sinclair’s stations anyway.
Democrats call for review of Paramount’s Middle Eastern financial backers
Democratic lawmakers are demanding scrutiny into Paramount Skydance’s financial backers amid rising concerns about potential foreign influence of U.S. media properties.
In a letter this week to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, seven U.S. senators criticized Carr’s suggestion that Paramount’s $111-billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, backed by billionaire Larry Ellison and his family, was on a fast track to receive FCC approval with scant oversight.
Such complicated mergers typically receive an intense government review. The proposed merger would combine two legendary film studios, dozens of cable channels, HBO, CBS and two major news organizations, CNN and CBS News.
Ellison and his son, David, who chairs Paramount, are friendly with President Trump, who has long agitated for changes at CNN, which is slated to be absorbed by Paramount.
The company has said it expects to complete the deal by the end of September.
The Democrats expressed concerns that the fix may be in. Trump’s Justice Department has been reviewing whether the merger would violate U.S. antitrust laws, but a key deadline passed last month without comment from the department’s antitrust regulators.
Also at issue is the Middle Eastern money the Ellison family has been expecting to pull off Paramount’s leveraged buyout of its larger entertainment company rival. The acquisition would leave the combined company with nearly $80 billion in debt.
Late last year, Paramount disclosed that it had lined up $24 billion from wealth funds representing the royal families of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, who would then become equity partners in the combined company.
Paramount has described the funds as largely passive investors, saying the royal families would not have input into corporate decision-making. They also would not control seats on the Paramount-Warner board.
Congressional Democrats previously have warned about potential national security concerns. The senators, led by Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), remain concerned, particularly because the transaction will help shape the future of Hollywood production and the direction of key news outlets, including CNN, which maintains a strong presence around the world.
Members of the party have called on Carr to conduct “a full and independent” analysis of the foreign ownership interests before signing off on the merger. The FCC could play an important role, they said, because the tie-up includes Paramount-owned CBS, which holds FCC broadcast station licenses.
Paramount declined to comment. FCC officials did not respond to a request for comment.
Booker and Schumer pointed to Carr’s comments at an industry conference in Spain earlier this month. During an appearance at the Mobile World Congress, Carr suggested the Paramount-Warner deal could be swiftly approved because the foreign investment would warrant only a “very quick, almost pro forma review,” Carr reportedly said.
The FCC has a duty to examine foreign ownership, the lawmakers said, referencing the U.S. Communications Act, which forbids owners from outside the U.S. from holding more than 25% of the equity or voting interests in an entity that maintains an FCC license.
The lawmakers mentioned the FCC’s move earlier this year to tighten its foreign ownership framework to bolster transparency.
Paramount has not yet disclosed its final list of equity partners.
The company previously disclosed its proposed partners in Securities & Exchange Commission filings. However, last month, the composition of the Paramount-Warner deal changed when Larry Ellison agreed to fully guarantee the $45.7-billion in equity needed to finance the $31-a-share buyout of Warner investors.
Before Ellison stepped up, Warner board members had expressed concerns about Paramount’s financing. The tech billionaire’s increased involvement helped carry the Paramount deal over the finish line. Netflix bowed out Feb. 26, ceding the prize to Paramount.
Still, Paramount is expected to line up billions of dollars from outside investors.
It would be significant if Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the Qatar Investment Authority and Abu Dhabi’s L’imad Holding Co., contributed $24 billion to the deal, the Democrats wrote.
“This is not incidental capital, it represents roughly one-fifth of the total transaction value,” Booker and the others wrote. “And it is not clear that this will be the only foreign investment.”
Initially, Paramount included Chinese technology company Tencent Holdings as a minority investor, but Paramount later removed Tencent from the investor pool due to concerns about its problematic status — it has been blacklisted by the U.S. Department of Defense.
Bloomberg News reported earlier this month that Tencent might return to the fold.
“This constellation of foreign investment from China and from Gulf States, with complex and sometimes competing relationships with the United States, demands rigorous, not perfunctory review,” Booker and the others wrote.
The letter also was signed by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Mazie K. Hirono (D-Hawaii).
They keyed in on the role of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, saying it was controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “whom the U.S. intelligence community concluded ordered the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.”
The proposed $24-billion investment would give “these governments a significant financial stake in the future content, licensing, and strategic decisions of a combined entity that includes some of the most-watched news and entertainment networks in America.”
It is also unclear whether the current tensions in the Middle East over the Iran war will have an impact on Paramount’s investor syndicate.
Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, a proposed Paramount investor, also withdrew late last year.
Paramount shares held steady at $9.17. The company’s stock is down 31% since Feb. 27, when the company prevailed in the Warner auction.
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Why the FCC is unlikely to pull TV licenses over Iran news coverage
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is using his bully pulpit to push back against coverage of the U.S. military action in Iran that his boss President Trump doesn’t like, marking an extraordinary escalation in his clashes with the media.
On Saturday, Carr posted a message on X suggesting TV stations could lose their government licenses to use the public airwaves if they “don’t operate in the public interest.”
Underneath his statement, Carr shared a social media post from Trump, who complained about the New York Times and Wall Street Journal stories on the five refueling tankers were hit during an Iranian missile strike on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
Carr seized on Trump’s missive to issue a warning to TV outlets, which are frequently threatened by the president when he is angry at their coverage.
It’s the latest attempt by the FCC chair to apply pressure on media companies that irritate Trump with critical coverage of his administration.
Since becoming FCC chairman last year, Carr has repeatedly threatened to use the levers of power he has to punish TV and radio stations when they get in Trump’s crosshairs. His behavior has alarmed free speech advocates.
“Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions — also known as the fake news — have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr wrote, without providing evidence to back up his claims. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”
Carr’s threats are based on his assertions that said he wants to enforce the FCC’s public interest obligation for broadcasters that use the airwaves. He made similar remarks in the fall, which prompted two major TV station groups to keep ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air for a week due to remarks the host made regarding slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have repeatedly attacked news organizations for any reporting that doesn’t say the war in Iran is anything but a rousing success.
On Friday, Hegseth said took aim at CNN and said “the sooner David Ellison takes over that network the better.”
Ellison, the chief executive of Paramount who, along with his father, has forged strong ties to the White House, will have control over CNN in addition to CBS if the company’s deal to acquire the news outlet’s parent Warner Bros. Discovery is completed.
Carr made the appointment of an ombudsman for CBS News a condition to approve Ellison’s Skydance Partners deal to acquire Paramount last year. Paramount also drew scrutiny over its controversial decision to pay $16 million to settle Trump’s legal salvo against “60 Minutes” over the editing of an interview with his 2024 opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Most legal analysts viewed the case as frivolous.
The FCC has no jurisdiction over CNN, which is why most of Carr’s barbs are aimed at ABC, CBS and NBC, which air on local TV stations. He once wrote on X, “More Americans trust gas station sushi than the legacy national media.”
Trump said in a social media post Sunday that he was “thrilled” with Carr’s remarks and would support his efforts to go after what he called “Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations.”
“They get Billions of Dollars of FREE American Airwaves, and use it to perpetuate LIES, both in News and almost all of their Shows, including the Late Night Morons, who get gigantic Salaries for horrible ratings,” Trump wrote.
Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a Washington-based public interest communications attorney, believes Carr’s conduct and threats violate the 1st Amendment, adding that any serious attempt to revoke licenses would be tied up in legal challenges.
“Even if he started to try to deny a license renewal as quickly as he could, Brendan Carr would be long gone before that case would be over,” Schwartzman said. “The law intentionally sets out a very steep burden for the FCC to deny a license renewal; the process takes many years, during which time the licensee continues to operate normally under ‘continuing operating authority.’”
Carr’s remarks Saturday drew immediate blowback from Democrats and 1st Amendment advocates, noting the FCC’s role does not include policing the free press.
“Once again, this FCC pretends it has the power to control news coverage,” FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez said Monday in a statement. “In reality, the FCC has vanishingly little power over national news networks. It licenses local broadcast stations, not networks, and no licenses are up for renewal until 2028.”
Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom weighed in as well, posting, “If Trump doesn’t like your coverage of the war, his FCC will pull your broadcast license. That is flagrantly unconstitutional.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), usually a reliable voice of support for the Trump administration, expressed his concerns over Carr’s remarks.
“I’m a big supporter of the 1st Amendment,” Johnson told Fox News on Sunday. “I do not like the heavy hand of government no matter who’s wielding it. I’d rather the federal government stay out of the private sector as much as possible.”
Gomez added that while attempts to pull licenses border on folly, Carr’s threats and attacks on the media can create a chilling effect and erode the public’s confidence in the press.
“Over the past year, this FCC has attacked the media as part of a years-long campaign by this Administration and its allies to discredit factual, independent coverage while blaming the press for growing public distrust,” Gomez said. “Meanwhile, it is the FCC’s own credibility and public trust that are rapidly eroding.”
Trump is not the first president to target TV station licenses in response to negative news coverage. At the height of the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, Richard Nixon’s allies attempted to challenge the TV licenses for three stations owned at the time by the Washington Post.
The effort didn’t get far.
The last Los Angeles outlet to lose its broadcast license was KHJ in 1987, when the station was part of RKO General, a media company owned by the General Tire and Rubber Co. The case was related to corporate malfeasance and not broadcast content on the stations.
The process to revoke the RKO licenses took seven years from the moment the FCC voted in favor of the move.
“Since then, only small mom-and-pop radio stations have been litigated,” Schwartzman said. “The cases nearly always involve lying to the government, felony convictions or failure to pay regulatory fees. In one recent case, a small owner convicted of tax evasion still kept his license.”
There would be other logistical hurdles to the FCC making good on Carr’s threats.
As Gomez noted, Carr’s FCC only has regulatory control over the TV stations that carry the network signals. If stations were drop network programming for any reason, they could violate their affiliation contracts and lose the right to carry NFL football and other content that delivers big ratings and revenue.
Sinclair Broadcast Group wanted Kimmel to apologize to Kirk‘s family and contribute to his organization Turning Point USA before putting the host’s late night show on the air.
That did not happen and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” returned to Sinclair’s stations anyway.
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