Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr says he won’t scrap the agency’s controversial news distortion policy despite calls from a bipartisan group of former FCC chairs and commissioners.
“How about no,” Carr wrote in an X post in response to the petition from former FCC leaders. “On my watch, the FCC will continue to hold broadcasters accountable to their public interest obligations.”
The petition filed yesterday by former FCC chairs and commissioners asked the FCC to repeal its 1960s-era news distortion policy, which Carr has repeatedly invoked in threats to revoke broadcast licenses. In the recent Jimmy Kimmel controversy, Carr said that ABC affiliates could have licenses revoked for news distortion if they kept the comedian on the air.
The petition said the Kimmel incident and several other Carr threats illustrate “the extraordinary intrusions on editorial decision-making that Chairman Carr apparently understands the news distortion policy to permit.” The petition argued that the “policy’s purpose—to eliminate bias in the news—is not a legitimate government interest,” that it has chilled broadcasters’ speech, that it has been weaponized for partisan purposes, that it is overly vague, and is unnecessary given the separate rule against broadcast hoaxes.
“The news distortion policy is no longer justifiable under today’s First Amendment doctrine and no longer necessary in today’s media environment… The Commission should repeal the policy in full and recognize that it may not investigate or penalize broadcasters for ‘distorting,’ ‘slanting,’ or ‘staging’ the news, unless the broadcast at issue independently meets the high standard for broadcasting a dangerous hoax under 47 C.F.R. § 73.1217,” the petition said.
News distortion policy rarely enforced
The petition was filed by Mark Fowler, a Republican who chaired the FCC from 1981 to 1987; Dennis Patrick, a Republican who chaired the FCC from 1987 to 1989; Alfred Sikes, a Republican who chaired the FCC from 1989 to 1993; Tom Wheeler, a Democrat who chaired the FCC from 2013 to 2017; Andrew Barrett, a Republican who served as a commissioner from 1989 to 1996; Ervin Duggan, a Democrat who served as a commissioner from 1990 to 1994; and Rachelle Chong, a Republican who served as a commissioner from 1994 to 1997.
The filing, also signed by a former FCC general counsel and three former chiefs of staff, was organized by several advocates and advocacy groups.
“The petition, filed by Protect Democracy and TechFreedom with longtime consumer advocates Gigi Sohn and Andrew Jay Schwartzman, brings together experts who served the Commission from 1981 through 2017,” the Protect Democracy Project said. “Though these former officials hold diverse views on many policy issues, they are united in their belief that the news distortion policy violates First Amendment principles, chills broadcaster speech, and can be exploited for partisan purposes.”
Although previous FCC leaders didn’t rescind the news distortion policy, it was rarely enforced. There was “only one finding of distortion after 1982, when the Reagan-era FCC began to remove content regulations on broadcast news,” said a 2001 article by Santa Clara University professor Chad Raphael in the journal Communication Law and Policy. The one post-1982 finding of distortion was issued in a letter of admonishment to NBC in 1993 “for staging a segment of a Dateline NBC report on unsafe gas tanks in General Motors trucks.”
Not much changed in the two decades after that 2001 paper, as the FCC only considered allegations of news distortion in a few cases and did not make any findings of news distortion. While Carr hasn’t issued any findings of news distortion yet, he has alarmed former FCC leaders and free speech advocates by threatening to use it against broadcasters that he alleges are biased against Republicans.
Carr accuses his critics of censoring conservatives
Shortly after President Trump appointed him to the chairmanship, Carr revived news distortion complaints against ABC and CBS stations that had been dismissed in the Biden era under then-Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. CBS owner Paramount ultimately agreed to install an ombudsman, which Carr described as a “bias monitor,” in order to get a merger approved.
Despite reviving the complaints against broadcast stations accused of bias against President Donald Trump, Carr did not revive a separate complaint against Fox. In the Fox case, the Media and Democracy Project filed a petition to deny a license renewal for WTXF-TV in Philadelphia, a station owned and operated by Fox.
The petition alleged that Fox willfully distorted news with false reports of fraud in the 2020 election that Trump lost. Rosenworcel dismissed the petition a year and a half after it was filed, saying that complaints against broadcasters “come from all corners—right and left—but what they have in common is they ask the FCC to penalize broadcast television stations because they dislike station behavior, content, or coverage.”
Carr has repeatedly cited the Fox case to defend his threats against broadcasters over alleged bias against Trump. He criticized the Biden-era FCC for keeping the Fox petition on the docket for over a year instead of dismissing it outright. Carr’s X post yesterday said, “it is quite rich for the exact same people that pressured prior FCCs to censor conservatives through the news distortion policy to now object to the agency’s even-handed application of the law.”
“You’re the FCC Chair… Defend your censorship”
Carr called out Sohn in a separate post, noting her support of the petition to deny the Fox station license renewal. He lodged a similar criticism against Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).
Sohn responded, “The core allegation in that petition was that a licensee who was found by two separate courts to have lied to the public about the 2020 election lacked the character to hold a broadcast license. Why didn’t you revive that one along with the others?”
Sohn, who was nominated by Biden to the FCC but not confirmed by the Senate, also chided Carr for being overly defensive. “A wee bit defensive, aren’t we?” she wrote. “You’re the FCC Chair—you move markets. I’m just a plain Ol’ civilian. Defend your censorship.”
Carr’s threats regarding the Kimmel show were criticized by both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Cruz, the Senate Commerce Committee chairman, has scheduled an FCC oversight hearing at which Carr will testify on December 17.
FCC Democrat Anna Gomez will also testify at the hearing. “The Communications Act forbids the Commission from censoring broadcasters, and the First Amendment protects journalistic choices from government intimidation,” Gomez said yesterday. “Nevertheless, this FCC has deployed a vague and ineffective news distortion policy as a weapon to stretch its licensing authority and pressure newsrooms.”
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