Brendan Carr Can’t Explain Why ‘Equal Time’ Rule Doesn’t Apply To Right Wing Radio

from the words-are-but-wind dept

We’ve noted repeatedly how Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr has been abusing the FCC’s “equal opportunity” (or “equal time”) rule to try and threaten daytime and late night talk shows with government retribution if they refuse to enthusiastically coddle Republicans.

Late night shows had historically been exempt from the dated rules, which required that any airing of a political candidate on “publicly owned” airwaves is countered with the appearance from a candidate from the opposing party. But Carr isn’t interested in equilibrium; he’s interested abusing FCC authority to try and silence critics of Donald Trump and his increasingly unpopular policies.

But folks have increasingly noted that Brendan Carr doesn’t appear to have any interest in enforcing the same standard on radio, where (especially on AM), listeners are constantly served up a lopsided dose of race-baiting agitprop pretending to be news. When he’s been asked about this inconsistency, Carr has been painfully and curiously vague:

“In a press conference after the FCC’s February 18 meeting, Deadline reporter Ted Johnson asked Carr why he has not expressed “the same concern about broadcast talk radio as broadcast TV talk shows.”

The Deadline reporter pointed out that “Sean Hannity’s show featured Ken Paxton in December.” Paxton, the Texas attorney general, is running for a US Senate seat in this year’s election. Carr claimed in response that TV broadcasters have been “misreading” FCC precedents while talk radio shows have not been.

“It appeared that programmers were either overreading or misreading some of the case law on the equal-time rule as it applies to broadcast TV,” Carr replied. “We haven’t seen the same issues on the radio side, but the equal-time rule is going to apply to broadcast across the board, and we’ll take a look at anything that arises at the end of the day.”

It’s of course far worse on the radio side, which has been utterly dominated by outright right wing propaganda since the early 90s. And he will, of course, not be “taking a look at anything that arises,” because, again, he’s not remotely interested in abusing this rule consistently because he’s an authoritarian hack.

Ars Technica spoke to Gigi Sohn, whose appointment to the FCC under Biden was, if you’ll recall, dismantled by a telecom and media company homophobic smear campaign:

“Carr’s claim that TV but not radio broadcasters have misread FCC precedents is “a bunch of nonsense,” said Gigi Sohn, a longtime lawyer and consumer advocate who served as counselor to then-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler during the Obama era. Carr “was responding to criticism from people like Sean Hannity that the guidance would apply to conservative talk radio just as much as it would to so-called ‘liberal’ TV,” Sohn told Ars. “It doesn’t matter whether a broadcaster is a radio broadcaster or a TV broadcaster, the Equal Opportunities law and however the FCC implements it must apply to both equally.”

This is very typical Carr. The law and earthly logic are malleable constructs that easily bend to whatever his goal is at any given moment. This blatant, mindless inconsistency has always been absolutely central to who he is, even before he became the authoritarian government’s top censor. It was evident way back during the fights over net neutrality and telecom oversight.

It’s why anybody with sense (including this website) recommended that the man be allowed nowhere near actual levers of power and policy-making.

Filed Under: brendan carr, censor, censorship, equal time, fcc, first amendment, partisan hack, radio, sean hannity, tv