to pay $16 million<\/a> to settle Trump\u2019s legal salvo against \u201c60 Minutes\u201d over the editing of an interview with his 2024 opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Most legal analysts viewed the case as frivolous.<\/p>\nThe FCC has no jurisdiction over CNN, which is why most of Carr\u2019s barbs are aimed at ABC, CBS and NBC, which air on local TV stations. He once wrote on X, \u201cMore Americans trust gas station sushi than the legacy national media.\u201d <\/p>\n
Trump said in a social media post Sunday that he was \u201cthrilled\u201d with Carr\u2019s remarks and would support his efforts to go after what he called \u201cHighly Unpatriotic \u2018News\u2019 Organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey get Billions of Dollars of FREE American Airwaves, and use it to perpetuate LIES, both in News and almost all of their Shows, including the Late Night Morons, who get gigantic Salaries for horrible ratings,\u201d Trump wrote.<\/p>\n
Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a Washington-based public interest communications attorney, believes Carr\u2019s conduct and threats violate the 1st Amendment, adding that any serious attempt to revoke licenses would be tied up in legal challenges. <\/p>\n
\u201cEven if he started to try to deny a license renewal as quickly as he could, Brendan Carr would be long gone before that case would be over,\u201d Schwartzman said. \u201cThe law intentionally sets out a very steep burden for the FCC to deny a license renewal; the process takes many years, during which time the licensee continues to operate normally under \u2018continuing operating authority.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Carr\u2019s remarks Saturday drew immediate blowback from Democrats and 1st Amendment advocates, noting the FCC\u2019s role does not include policing the free press.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce again, this FCC pretends it has the power to control news coverage,\u201d FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez said Monday in a statement. \u201cIn reality, the FCC has vanishingly little power over national news networks. It licenses local broadcast stations, not networks, and no licenses are up for renewal until 2028.\u201d<\/p>\n
Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom weighed in as well, posting, \u201cIf Trump doesn\u2019t like your coverage of the war, his FCC will pull your broadcast license. That is flagrantly unconstitutional.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), usually a reliable voice of support for the Trump administration, expressed his concerns over Carr\u2019s remarks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a big supporter of the 1st Amendment,\u201d Johnson told Fox News on Sunday. \u201cI do not like the heavy hand of government no matter who\u2019s wielding it. I\u2019d rather the federal government stay out of the private sector as much as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gomez added that while attempts to pull licenses border on folly, Carr\u2019s threats and attacks on the media can create a chilling effect and erode the public\u2019s confidence in the press.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the past year, this FCC has attacked the media as part of a years-long campaign by this Administration and its allies to discredit factual, independent coverage while blaming the press for growing public distrust,\u201d Gomez said. \u201cMeanwhile, it is the FCC\u2019s own credibility and public trust that are rapidly eroding.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump is not the first president to target TV station licenses in response to negative news coverage. At the height of the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, Richard Nixon\u2019s allies attempted to challenge the TV licenses for three stations owned at the time by the Washington Post.<\/p>\n
The effort didn\u2019t get far.<\/p>\n
The last Los Angeles outlet to lose its broadcast license was KHJ in 1987, when the station was part of RKO General, a media company owned by the General Tire and Rubber Co. The case was related to corporate malfeasance and not broadcast content on the stations.<\/p>\n
The process to revoke the RKO licenses took seven years from the moment the FCC voted in favor of the move.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince then, only small mom-and-pop radio stations have been litigated,\u201d Schwartzman said. \u201cThe cases nearly always involve lying to the government, felony convictions or failure to pay regulatory fees. In one recent case, a small owner convicted of tax evasion still kept his license.\u201d<\/p>\n
There would be other logistical hurdles to the FCC making good on Carr\u2019s threats.<\/p>\n
As Gomez noted, Carr\u2019s FCC only has regulatory control over the TV stations that carry the network signals. If stations were to drop network programming for any reason, they could violate their affiliation contracts and lose the right to carry NFL football and other content that delivers big ratings and revenue.<\/p>\n
Sinclair Broadcast Group wanted Kimmel to apologize to Kirk\u2018s family and contribute to his organization Turning Point USA before putting the host\u2019s late night show on the air. <\/p>\n
That did not happen and \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live!\u201d returned to Sinclair\u2019s stations anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is using his bully pulpit to push back against coverage of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[46126,1436,29454,5177,21405,11105,101960,48,52,51,20094,101961,47,50,49,55656,5848,6220,11431,1519,101962],"class_list":["post-223588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-carr","tag-case","tag-cbs","tag-cnn","tag-david-ellison","tag-fcc","tag-iran-news-coverage","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-license","tag-license-renewal","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-medium-company","tag-network","tag-radio-station","tag-threat","tag-trump","tag-tv-license"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}