from the you-sir-are-not-popular dept
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 in a post at the time, the lawsuit was utterly baseless, and tramples the First Amendment, editorial discretion, and common sense.
CBS/Paramount is looking for regulatory approval for its $8 billion merger with Skydance (run by Larry Ellison’s kid David). Trump 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.
It’s part of a broader effort by Carr to abuse FCC authority to harass companies that aren’t suitably deferential to Trump, aren’t racist and sexist enough for the administration’s liking, or might get the crazy idea of calling out the Trump administration’s bullshit.
Carr’s increasingly unhinged behavior continues to attract a growing roster of critics, including a bipartisan coalition of former Republican and Democrat officials who say Carr is taking a giant, heaping dump on the First Amendment with the CBS inquiry. That includes Republican Alfred Sikes, the FCC chair from 1989 to 1993, and Democrat Tom Wheeler, the FCC chair from 2013 to 2017.
In a filing submitted to the FCC last week, the former commissioners all make it clear Carr is abusing the FCC’s news distortion rules to attack journalism:
“…The Commission is signaling to broadcasters that it will indeed act at the behest of the White House by closely scrutinizing the content of news coverage and threatening the regulatory licenses of broadcasters whose news outlets produce coverage that does not pass muster in the President’s view.
We recommend the Commission reverse course, closing this proceeding without further action and reaffirming its long-held commitment to acting as an independent agency rather than the White House’s personal censor.”
How polite. The former commissioners are careful to suggest the Carr FCC “may be seeking to censor the news media in a manner antithetical to the First Amendment,” not that they’re actually and obviously censoring the news media and trampling the First Amendment, lest somebody get upset.
Carr is trying to claim that the minor edits done by CBS violate a longstanding “Broadcast News Distortion” policy that’s almost never enforced by the agency, which has largely given up on media regulations under both parties. The policy in question says violations must involve clear distortion of “a significant event and not merely a minor or incidental aspect of the news report.”
That means hard proof of something like a bribe by a company or politicians to change news coverage, and that clearly doesn’t apply here. Trumpism is just making baseless accusations against CBS, knowing that even if CBS isn’t actually found guilty of anything, it allows the vast GOP propaganda machine to generate entire news cycles suggesting that 60 Minutes did something nefarious.
That further props up the right wing victimization machine, forging greater hostility to real journalism or anybody who might be inclined to poke holes in authoritarian propaganda. All while authoritarians pretend that protecting free speech is among their top priorities.
Filed Under: authoritarian, brendan carr, fcc, first amendment, free speech, journalism, media, mergers, propaganda
