FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is back on the broadcast media’s throat. This time, he is unhappy with the way broadcasters have been covering the war with Iran.
In an X post on Saturday, Carr quote-tweeted a Truth Social post by President Trump in which the president claimed that news coverage of the Iran war was “terrible” and “intentionally misleading” and accused traditional media organizations of actually wanting the U.S. to lose the war. In his own post, Carr threatened to revoke licenses if coverage doesn’t change in a way the Trump administration would approve of.
“Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions – also known as the fake news – have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr wrote. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”
Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey called for the FCC Chairman to resign over the missive.
“Your Saturday post is not an aberration. It is the latest and most dangerous step in a sustained campaign to use the FCC’s licensing authority as a weapon against broadcasters and journalists whose coverage displeases the Trump administration,” Sen. Markey wrote in a letter on Sunday. “The FCC’s credibility depends on its willingness to exercise its authority on the merits, not at the direction of the President, and not as an instrument of retribution against journalism. You have once again shown that you are unwilling to maintain that independence and uphold your sworn oath to defend the U.S. Constitution, and I once again call on you to resign.”
Under Carr’s leadership, the FCC’s tight grip on broadcast media has been the source of controversy. Back in September, ABC briefly suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night TV show after his comments about the late MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk angered Trump’s fan base. Following Kimmel’s segment, Carr appeared on a podcast episode to vow revenge, saying he would ask TV stations to remove Kimmel from the air.
Trump praised Carr’s actions at the time, saying that the shows that often criticize him should “maybe” have their license taken away, but ultimately the decision was up to Brendan Carr, whom he deemed “outstanding,” “a tough guy,” and “a patriot.”
More recently, Stephen Colbert said that his network, CBS, forced him to cancel an appearance by Democratic Texas Rep. James Talarico, who is up for a Senate election later this year, in anticipation of FCC pushback.
Carr is not the sole high-ranking U.S. official to pledge attacks on the media. On Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth complained about CNN’s coverage of the Iran war and said he was looking forward to Paramount Skydance owner and Trump ally David Ellison taking over the network.
David Ellison, the son of billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison, is gunning for a publicly disliked yet Trump administration-backed merger of Paramount Skydance with Warner Bros., a media and entertainment conglomerate that owns CNN. Under Ellison’s leadership, Skydance took over CBS News parent company Paramount last year and later installed Free Press founder Bari Weiss as the new editor-in-chief of the news organization.
Source: Gizmodo