Monday, January 27, 2025

FCC Chair Signals Headaches For Media Giants


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.

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.

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