FCC’s Gomez (Correctly) Says Brendan Carr Is Abusing FCC Authority To ‘Censor And Control’ Journalists

Instead of doing things like protecting consumers or telecom and media market competition (you know, his purported job), Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr has spent his first few months in office abusing agency authority to threaten companies that refuse to kiss the Trump administration’s ass, or harass telecom companies that aren’t sexist or racist enough for King Trump’s liking.

Carr’s also been busy abusing the FCC merger review process to threaten and harass media companies and journalists for the crime of doing very basic journalism. He’s been particularly focused on attacking CBS (which is eyeing an $8 million merger with Skydance) over some bogus claims that that the network, which has ironically increasingly pandered to Republicans, is being unfair to Republicans.

A bipartisan roster of former FCC Commissioners recently filed a complaint that Carr is attacking journalistic principles and the First Amendment. Carr has also clearly annoyed fellow FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, who had plenty to say this week at a major broadcaster conference:

“There’s been an administration-wide campaign to censor and control,” Gomez said. “The weaponization of the FCC’s licensing authority is just a component of that campaign to censor and control.” 

Carr is trying to claim that minor edits for brevity done by CBS to a pre-election Kamala Harris interview violate a longstanding “Broadcast News Distortion” policy that’s almost never enforced by the agency. The policy in question says violations must involve clear distortion of “a significant event and not merely a minor or incidental aspect of the news report.”

That means hard proof of something like a bribe by a company or politicians to change news coverage, and that clearly doesn’t apply here. Trumpism is just making baseless accusations against CBS, knowing that even if CBS isn’t actually found guilty of anything, it allows the vast GOP propaganda machine to generate entire news cycles suggesting that 60 Minutes did something nefarious to Republicans, feeding into the modern right’s vast pseudo-victimization and “censorship” grievance complex.

It’s part of a broader trend where the U.S. press goes out of its way to hire Republicans, coddle Republicans, and normalize unpopular and even dangerous Republican ideals (in a clumsy bid to avoid being falsely accused of “liberal bias”), only to be punished in a very Lando Calrissian deal with the Empire sort of way by intractable and insatiable right wing zealots.

When Biden FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel left the FCC, I noted she couldn’t be bothered to even mention that any of this was problematic in her departure statement. The same goes for soon-to-depart FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks. Generally, many Dem FCC officials have been hesitant to acknowledge reality lest it impact their future revolving door employment opportunities.

So it’s nice to see Gomez leveraging her platform and being blunt about Carr’s bizarre, free speech trampling zealotry:

“They are being used to harass and then bully in order to get broadcasters to alter their editorial decisions in order to provide content that is favorable to this administration or not disfavored by this administration,” Gomez said. “And that’s a warning … That is completely contrary to the freedom of the press. You do not want regulators like me interfering in your journalistic decisions.”

Again, this is all wildly hypocritical for Carr, who spent his term in the first Trump administration by whining that absolutely any effort to protect U.S. consumers or impose oversight on giant terrible telecom monopolies was a grotesque abuse of government power (see: net neutrality, privacy). Now he’s busy abusing FCC power in ways even many of his terrible predecessors believe to be extreme.

Some of the supplemental lawsuits supporting this kayfabe, like the one by the right wing Center For American Rights, simply asked for a light fine and scolding of CBS for its nonexistent offense. Carr’s gone even further, leveraging FCC power to threaten merger transactions and even pull local broadcast licenses (something even his predecessor, Ajit Pai, believed to be a bridge too far).

Traditionally you need a 3-2 voting majority to get much done, which Carr doesn’t have until Congress confirms Republican Olivia Trusty to the commission. Trump is signaling he won’t replace Starks, likely leaving the FCC with a 3-1 voting majority by Spring, at which point Carr can get to work implementing even more unpopular ideas, like gutting all remaining oversight of predatory telecom monopolies, or implementing a new tax on streaming companies so we can give Elon Musk some more subsidies.

Until then (and thereafter) it’s just a game of finding some way to direct something vaguely resembling accountability Carr’s direction, which begins with a recently announced House investigation that might unearth some background on Carr’s many radical and problematic decisions.