ABC Asks Audience To Help Defend It From Brendan Carr’s Dumb Censorship Attacks

from the is-that-the-faint-outline-of-a-backbone? dept

ABC continues to send signals that it actually intends to fight back against Brendan Carr’s clumsy efforts to censor the network’s comedians and journalists.

As Mike noted last week, the public had until Monday, June 22 to file public comment with the FCC about the agency’s ongoing censorship efforts. Part of those efforts have involved Carr colluding with right wing broadcasters to pretend that ABC broke the law when The View hosted Texas Democratic Senate hopeful James Talarico last February. MAGA is clearly worried about Talarico’s chances in Texas.

Carr falsely claims Talarico’s appearance violated the dated FCC “equal time” rule, which used to mandate that an election season prime time TV appearance by one party’s politicians had to be countered by an appearance by the other party’s politicians. The rule is no longer meaningfully enforced because television obviously has waning impact in the internet era.

But more importantly, The View had struck very clear agreements with the FCC that it has been exempt from this rule since 2002. Carr knows this. But he still falsely claimed The View violated the law, appears to have worked closely with right wing broadcast affiliates to try and make it look like ABC’s Houston affiliate broke the law, and launched an unprecedented early review of ABC’s broadcast license ownership as punishment.

Carr has a real dead dog of a case here, which would explain why ABC is giving ongoing signs that they intend to fight this (as opposed to that time they paid the president a $15 million bribe to settle a baseless lawsuit). In addition to recent filings calling out Carr for manufacturing a fake legal scandal, ABC is now running ad spots calling on its viewers to file comment with the FCC:

Brendan Carr won’t actually read the comments. And the comment period will be flooded with all sorts of phony bullshit in support of Brendan Carr, because that’s simply how these gentlemen operate. But having public comments in opposition on the permanent record still matters. And it’s good to see ABC indicating that it plans to actually fight Carr instead of rolling over and baring its tummy.

It certainly can afford it. And it certainly has support. And as Trump’s health and political influence wanes, hopefully you’ll slowly start to see more corporations exhibiting something vaguely resembling courage.

In case you’re interested, there are technically two different FCC proceedings involved in Brendan Carr’s censorship charade.

One, The View Inquiry (Docket No. 26-124) had open comments until June 22; and reply comments due by July 6. You can still file an express comment on this proceeding here.

Two, the Broadcast License Renewal Challenge (Docket No. 26-131) focuses on the forced early renewal battle for ABC’s eight owned local affiliate stations. Petitions for this docket are due June 29, ABC’s oppositions are due July 29, and final replies are slated for August 5, 2026.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, brendan carr, censorship, comedy, equal time, fcc, james talarico, jounalism, media, the view

Companies: abc, disney