FCC’s Carr Threatens TV Broadcast Licenses Over News Coverage
(Bloomberg) — Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr threatened to revoke broadcasters’ licenses if they don’t take the “correct course” in broadcasting news.
“Publishers who publish distorted news, also known as fake news and fake news, now have a chance to correct course before license renewals arrive,” Carr said in a social media post on Saturday. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest and if they fail to do so they will lose their licences.”
Carr issued his warning following a post in which President Donald Trump complained about reports of US-Israeli attacks on Iran. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also criticized news organizations covering the war, saying they “make the president look bad.”
This was Carr’s latest threat to television broadcasters after Trump expressed displeasure with the broadcasts or a particular reporter or late-night talk show host. Trump suggested that networks should lose their broadcast licenses due to unfair coverage. Such licenses do not apply to cable, broadcast or print organizations.
The FCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
Even before Trump began his second term, he had called on the FCC to “impose the maximum fine and penalty” on CBS for alleged “unlawful and unlawful conduct” while editing a 60 Minutes interview with 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
In September, Carr appeared on local stations’ ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! He claimed that he was risking his broadcasting licenses to broadcast his programme. After the late-night host accused Trump supporters of using the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk to “score political points.”
The FCC does not directly license national networks and therefore cannot directly enforce against them. Individual local stations, including those owned by networks and independently owned affiliates, hold FCC licenses and are legally responsible for complying with the agency’s rules.
Reversing licenses for content the administration doesn’t like would represent an unprecedented expansion of the FCC’s powers, and some of the initiatives have been successfully challenged in court.
Following Carr’s statements about Kimmel, Nexstar Media Group Inc., the largest owner of local TV stations in the United States, pulled the program from 32 ABC stations. Sinclair Inc. also removed the show from ABC affiliates. Both companies restored the program to their stations in late September.
The FCC launched a concurrent investigation into ABC’s daytime talk show The View after it hosted Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico as a guest while he was running in the primaries in February. CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert said his network could not air an interview with Talarico out of concern Carr would consider it a violation of federal justice rules.
Colbert posted the interview on YouTube and it has been viewed more than 9 million times.
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