Carr Urged To Stop FCC's Early License Reviews

A bipartisan group of former FCC chairs and senior agency officials is urging Chairman Brendan Carr to immediately end the agency’s early license renewal review of ABC’s eight owned-and-operated local stations, denouncing the proceeding as “an assault on free speech disguised as regulatory process” and a “grave violation of both the Communications Act and the Constitution.”

In a filing submitted Tuesday, the former officials charged that Carr “seeks to censor Disney’s and ABC’s speech and send a chilling message to all broadcasters: carry speech we don’t like at your peril.” 

They noted that the Commission launched the early renewal process for the stations just one day after President Donald Trump and the First Lady publicly criticized ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel over a joke he made about them. Public reporting and the notice establishing the proceeding’s procedures, the group wrote, further suggest that the chairman has prejudged the outcome and that the FCC may claim authority to terminate the licenses early—evidence, they argued, that the review is “pretext for the Chairman’s continued campaign of suppressing disfavored speech.”

Carr has described the review as part of an ongoing investigation into Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies. During his monthly press conference, however, he indicated that ABC’s decision to limit coverage of the president’s primetime address could also factor into the proceeding.The former chairs, commissioners, chiefs of staff, general counsels and bureau chiefs called the action “virtually unprecedented” and “the latest attack in a sustained campaign” by the FCC and the Trump administration of “threatening legal sanctions against licensees whose speech President Trump dislikes.” 

They demanded that the Commission “respect the constitutional and congressional prohibitions on its ‘power of censorship’ and terminate this proceeding.”

The group further criticized filings from two conservative organizations—the Center for American Rights and the Media Research Center—that seek denial of the stations’ license renewals. Those requests, the former officials said, improperly ask the FCC to “interfere with the stations’ First Amendment-protected editorial discretion: word choices, fact-checks, time covering certain topics, personnel, and the licensees’ perceived viewpoints,” matters that “are not legitimate subjects of FCC regulation.”

More than 141,000 comments have already been filed in the proceeding. The deadline for public comments is Aug. 5.