You Have Less Than A Week To Tell The FCC That Carr’s Censorial Attack On ABC Is Nonsense

from the speak-up-now dept

You have less than a week to weigh in on Brendan Carr’s obviously bullshit retaliatory censorial attack on Disney. While it’s quite clear that Carr is likely to ignore the comments, they still very much matter. It needs to be in the public record that the public is against this attack on free speech and fundamental rights, rather than letting MAGA chuds stuff the comment box with nonsense.

Karl and I have detailed much of the history of how we got here. For many years, Carr has presented himself as a true defender of free speech and the First Amendment, but his actions made clear long ago that he only meant when Democrats were in the White House. During the first Trump administration, Trump demanded that his FCC support his plan to wreck Section 230 and enable greater censorship online. When one of the three GOP FCC commissioners — staunch Republican Mike O’Rielly — made a few tepid comments about how the FCC shouldn’t be in the business of messing with 230, Trump pulled his renomination. Carr, however, made it clear he’d be Trump’s little censorial lapdog.

He then spent the four Biden years once again pretending to care about free speech, but the second Trump was elected, Carr made it abundantly clear that if Trump made him chair of the FCC he’d be Trump’s loyal censor in chief. Since then he’s lived up to that promise and more. He’s launched a series of bogus investigations, always into perceived ideological enemies of Trump and MAGA, always pretending that he just has to do this. He held up the Ellisons’ takeover of Paramount and CBS until CBS agreed to pay Trump a bribe. And, most famously, he briefly got Jimmy Kimmel kicked off of TV for making a joke that Carr didn’t like.

His latest move, as we’ve covered, was to go after ABC’s The View for having Texas Senate candidate James Talarico on their show. It was yet another in Carr’s long line of bullshit, censorial investigations designed to intimidate broadcasters (but only those he deems too woke — if you’re MAGA, you get a total free pass) into only letting MAGA and MAGA-supportive guests on the air. This time, though, Disney fought back.

Rather than pathetically caving like CBS, Disney filed a petition for declaratory ruling that The View had done nothing wrong in having Talarico on as a guest. They even hired some big time litigators in Paul Clement and Jennifer Tatel to file the petition.

The underlying issue is the “equal time rule,” which was barely discussed for decades. But Carr has glommed onto it as his tool for attacking ABC for not being obsequious enough to Trump. The rule, which only applies to broadcast license holders, says that they have to provide equal time to competing candidates for public office. But there’s a clear exemption for a “bona fide newscast” or a “bona fide news interview.”

All the way back in 2002, the FCC made it clear that The View, and plenty of other shows like it, qualified for the “bona fide news exemption,” and it has been operating accordingly, as have many right-leaning radio and TV programs. Indeed, most local TV station affiliates (which these rules technically apply to) are owned by MAGA friendly media giants like Sinclair and Nexstar. Did Carr go after any of them? Of course not.

Instead, he manufactured a fake controversy. Most broadcaster affiliates (including Disney’s owned and operated affiliates) didn’t bother to file any paperwork regarding Talarico’s appearance because they (like everyone else) had been relying on the FCC’s granted exemption as a bona fide news interview. But Carr then got a few non-Disney owned affiliates (i.e., those owned by Trump-friendly media conglomerates) to file some paperwork in order to pretend that Disney’s owned and operated affiliates were somehow bucking the normal way of operating. As Disney noted in its filing, the whole thing was manufactured by Carr:

“The Bureau neglected to note, however, that while certain ABC affiliates documented Talarico’s appearance in their online public inspection files, the filings were made more than two weeks after Talarico’s appearance and apparently at the request of the FCC, which reportedly promised to eschew enforcement for the late filing. KTRK Television received no such request and no such offer, despite the Bureau specifically contacting it about the Talarico appearance less than 10 days after it occurred.”

With Disney filing its petition, Carr recognized he basically had to open a public comment period, even though he clearly has no intention of admitting that his entire investigation is bullshit.

But that doesn’t mean we should ignore it. As Karl noted, it’s quite likely that MAGA folks are spinning up their usual fake-comment-orama-generator, which Carr will undoubtedly use to claim there’s widespread public support for him punishing Disney.

But having comments on the record calling out how this is censorial nonsense, a massive abuse of Carr’s power, and blatantly unconstitutional still matter. The record is public, and it will be helpful to make it clear that Carr knows exactly what he’s doing and for whose benefit he’s doing this little charade. MAGA folks won’t be in charge forever, and dismantling the corrupt censorial rot represented by the likes of Brendan Carr needs to start with the basics: getting it on the record that we all know and see what he’s doing.

The first round of comments are due on June 22nd. It’s a simple form and you can just fill it out. Or if you’d prefer, write out a document, save it as a PDF, and attach it via that form as well. Just get it on the record that you don’t support Carr’s censorial retaliation campaign. There will also be a second round of comments due July 6th, but it would be nice to get more people to file in this first round and make it clear that the public knows what Carr is up to.

For what it’s worth, in any such filing, I would recommend making your arguments as clearly and compellingly as possible. I know that sometimes people just file pure angry screeds but those are less effective than a few paragraphs explaining why you don’t support Carr’s censorial campaign and asking the FCC to knock it off.

Filed Under: brendan carr, broadcast licenses, censorship, comment period, donald trump, equal time rule, fcc, intimidation, james talarico, jimmy kimmel, the view

Companies: abc, disney