Former FCC Officials Push To Kill Dated ‘News Distortion’ Rule Trump Abused To Bully CBS And ABC Into Feckless Compliance

from the this-is-why-we-can’t-have-nice-things dept

A coalition of former FCC officials are pushing for the elimination of a longstanding FCC rule the Trump administration abused to “bully” ABC and CBS into kissing the president’s ass (I’ll use the term bully loosely since both companies seemed very eager to roll over for the far right wing).

Last October, Trump sued CBS claiming (falsely) that a 60 Minutes interview of Kamala Harris had been “deceitfully edited” to her benefit (they simply shortened some of her answers for brevity, as news outlets often do). As Mike explored at the time, the lawsuit was utterly baseless, and trampled the First Amendment, editorial discretion, and common sense.

CBS/Paramount was looking for regulatory approval for its $8 billion merger with Skydance (run by Larry Ellison’s kid David). Trump and his FCC boss Brendan Carr quickly zeroed on on this, and began using merger approval as leverage to bully CBS into even more feckless coverage of the administration.

One of the FCC rules they abused during this whole process was the FCC’s “Broadcast News Distortion” policy. The policy, created in 1949, gives the agency the power to punish media companies for ethical violations featuring a clear distortion of “a significant event and not merely a minor or incidental aspect of the news report.”

Ideally, this would be something like a media company taking a bribe from a company or public official to kill a story. The FCC has only actually used the rule eight times between 1969 and 2019, and few of those actions actually resulted in serious, substantive punishment.

Carr’s already grossly abused the rule twice; one to bully CBS into weakening its journalism, and once to try and bully ABC/Disney into pulling Jimmy Kimmel off the air for making fun of Republicans. Both times, Carr leveraged the rule to launch fake “investigations” into the companies to create the illusion he’s a very big boy doing very serious things.

In response to recent abuse of the rule by Trumpism, a coalition of former FCC officials are pushing for its elimination entirely. A bipartisan coalition of seven former FCC chairs and commissioners, including five Republicans, have filed a petition with the FCC urging for the elimination of the rule, saying it’s a threat to free speech and functional journalism:

“The News Distortion Policy gives any administration a tool to target outlets that provide unfavorable coverage. Chairman Carr’s recent threats against ABC and Disney demonstrate exactly this risk.

After ABC aired Jimmy Kimmel’s commentary on Charlie Kirk’s murder, Carr threatened to revoke the network’s licenses for alleged news distortion. The message was clear: Criticize those in power and face government retaliation.

As petitioners warn: What a Republican FCC Chairman can do today, a Democratic FCC Chairman could do tomorrow. The only solution is to eliminate this dangerous tool entirely.”

Of course, FCC boss Brendan Carr refuses to give up any power so this is a non-starter for him. Carr has made a big stink about eliminating all manner of “burdensome FCC regulations” as an act of “government efficiency.” As we’ve noted, this mostly involves important consumer protections and media consolidation limits his friends in the media and telecom sector don’t like.

Carr’s still keen to maintain FCC authority he can abuse to stifle speech. He’s also keen, as we saw with TikTok, to just make up authority the FCC doesn’t have whenever it suits him.

So it’s little surprise that his response to this petition from a bunch of his predecessors was to mock it, rather than live up to his promise to eliminate “burdensome FCC regulations.” Apparently that doesn’t matter when he has the power to punish media companies for their First Amendment-protected speech:

That’s Brendan Carr tweeting the following in response to a story about this petition:

How about no

On my watch, the FCC will continue to hold broadcasters accountable to their public interest obligations.

And it is quite rich for the exact same people that pressured prior FCCS to censor conservatives through the news distortion policy to now object to the agency’s even-handed application of the law.

This is the hypocritical and logical inconsistent dance at the heart of Brendan Carr’s zealotry; he professes the FCC has absolutely no authority whatsoever when it comes to functional corporate oversight and consumer protection, yet somehow all the authority in the world to bully companies that are critical of the president or not racist and sexist enough for the president’s liking.

There’s another irony here; for generations, telecom and media giants routinely whined about the FCC “abusing its regulatory authority” and engaging in “radical extremism” any time it engaged in even the softest act of consumer protection. This was a cornerstone of “free market Libertarian” complaints. Remember the histrionics over some fairly basic, loophole-filled, net neutrality requirements?

Yet when the worst abuses of FCC authority finally did arrive, it came at the hands of far-right extremists.

That doesn’t mean we should abandon FCC oversight of corporate power (including media consolidation and diversity ownership rules) entirely, though I suspect that between good faith worries about abuse, and bad faith lobbying by corporate power, that’s the most likely outcome.

Filed Under: brendan carr, fcc, first amendmentm, free speech, journalism, news distortion, oversight, regulation

Companies: abc, cbs