Progressives were riled by the President Trump-appointed chairman\u2019s seeming willingness to go after broadcasters in an alleged violation of their First Amendment rights. At the time, a few fellow Republicans, including Cruz, blasted Carr for suggesting to ABC: \u201cWe can do this the easy way or hard way.\u201d <\/p>\n
Cruz, in September, said that Carr\u2019s comments belonged in the mob movie \u201cGoodfellas.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Carr said his comments about Kimmel were not intended as threats against Disney or the two ABC-affiliated station groups that preempted Kimmel\u2019s show. <\/p>\n
The chairman argued the FCC had statutory authority to make sure that TV stations acted in the public interest, although Carr did not clarify how one jumbled sentence in Kimmel\u2019s Sept. 15 monologue violated the broadcasters\u2019 obligation to serve its communities.<\/p>\n
Cruz was conciliatory Wednesday, praising Carr\u2019s work in his first year as FCC chairman. However, Democrats on the panel attempted to pivot much of the three-hour session into a public airing of the Trump administration\u2019s desire to punish broadcasters whom the president doesn\u2019t like \u2014 and Carr\u2019s seeming willingness to go along.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called Wednesday\u2019s Senate committee hearing. <\/p>\n
(Associated Press)<\/p>\n
Carr was challenged by numerous Democrats who suggested he was demonstrating fealty to the president rather than running the FCC as an independent licensing body.<\/p>\n
Despite the landmark Communications Act of 1934, which created the FCC, the agency isn\u2019t exactly independent, Carr and fellow Republican Commissioner Olivia Trusty testified. <\/p>\n
The two Republicans said because Trump has the power to hire and fire commissioners, the FCC was more akin to other agencies within the federal government. <\/p>\n
\u201cThen is President Trump your boss?\u201d asked Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.). The senator then asked Carr whether he remembered his oath of office. Federal officials, including Carr, have sworn to protect the Constitution.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe American people are your boss,\u201d Kim said. \u201cHave you ever had a conversation with the president or senior administration officials about using the FCC to go after critics?\u201d<\/p>\n
Carr declined to answer.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Protesters flocked to Hollywood to protest the preemption of \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live!\u201d after ABC briefly pulled the late-night host off air indefinitely over comments he made about the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. <\/p>\n
(Genaro Molina \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
The lone Democrat on the FCC, Anna M. Gomez<\/a>, was frequently at odds with her fellow commissioners, including during an exploration of whether she felt the FCC was doing Trump\u2019s bidding in its approach to merger approvals. <\/p>\n Trump separately continued his rant on media organizations he doesn\u2019t like, writing in a Truth Social post that NBC News \u201cshould be ashamed of themselves in allowing garbage \u2018interviews\u2019\u201d of his political rivals, in this case Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.). <\/p>\n Trump wrote that NBC and other broadcasters should pay \u201csignificant amounts of money for using the very valuable\u201d public airwaves.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, FCC approval of the Larry Ellison family\u2019s takeover of Paramount stalled for months until Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million<\/a> to settle a lawsuit over his grievances<\/a> with edits of a CBS \u201c60 Minutes\u201d pre-election interview<\/a> with Kamala Harris. <\/p>\n \u201cWithout a doubt, the FCC is leveraging its authority over mergers and enforcement proceedings in order to influence content,\u201d Gomez said. <\/p>\n Parts of the hearing devolved into partisan bickering over whether Democrats or Republicans had a worse track record of trampling on the 1st Amendment. Cruz and other Republicans referenced a 2018 letter, signed by three Democrats on the committee, which asked the FCC to investigate conservative TV station owner Sinclair Broadcast Group.<\/p>\n \u201cSuddenly Democrats have discovered the 1st Amendment,\u201d Cruz said. \u201cMaybe remember it when Democrats are in power. The 1st Amendment is not a one-way license for one team to abuse the power.<\/p>\n \u201cWe should respect the free speech of all Americans, regardless of party,\u201d Cruz said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. senators peppered Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr with questions during a wide-ranging hearing exploring media censorship,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[3587,46126,8142,9801,1751,11105,54277,36347,7084,54278,31736,48,52,51,47,50,49,6283,27700,1695,316],"class_list":["post-99555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-abc","tag-carr","tag-comment","tag-cruz","tag-democrats","tag-fcc","tag-fcc-chairman","tag-first-amendment-right","tag-hearing","tag-jimmy-kimmel-controversy","tag-kimmel","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-president","tag-senator","tag-trump-administration","tag-wednesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99555","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=99555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}