Brendan Carr is a silly, hypocritical fascist who splits his time between destroying U.S. consumer protection standards and media consolidation limits, and abusing his position as FCC boss to threaten broadcast networks for airing stuff like comedy. Or journalism. Or politicians that the increasingly-unpopular President is clearly afraid of.
Lately Trump has been complaining about the numerous polls all showing that he’s historically unpopular due to stuff like covering up for a pedophile and launching a disastrous war that’s driving up the cost of living for everybody. Most polls show Trump’s likely to sink Republicans in the midterms.
So like a dutiful little yipping chihuahua, Carr took to Elon Musk’s right wing propaganda website on Wednesday to once again hurl threats at journalists for the “crime” of…covering polling that clearly shows the U.S. President is historically unpopular:
If you can’t read it, it starts with Carr making the false claim that there’s a bunch of fake polls circulating that journalists are unethically repeating en masse. This is silly fascist code for the fact that Republican internal polling data indicates Trump’s fading health and political power are going to be an albatross around their necks this midterm voting season:
“During this election season, there has been a significant surge in entirely Fake Polls and Suppression Polls designed to do nothing more than interfere with the regular functioning of the electoral process and alter the normal patterns of voter turnout and enthusiasm.
Many journalists and broadcasters have been amplifying or airing these Polls without regard to basic journalistic ethics and without informing the public that those Polls lack a scientific, accurate, or even real basis.”
Carr continues by once again threatening to harass media companies for discussing polls the thin-skinned president and his pasty sycophants don’t like. He also, once again, falsely claims that he has the authority to act (read: censor media companies) under the FCC’s dated “broadcast news distortion” rule:
The FCC takes these issues seriously. Broadcasters are prohibited by the terms of their federal licenses from engaging in News Distortion or promoting Broadcast Hoaxes. It is important that broadcasters comply with their public interest obligations. After all, the country benefits greatly when Americans can trust and rely on the media to report the news fairly and accurately.
Broadcasters are advised to avoid engaging in News Distortions or running Broadcast Hoaxes by airing Polls that would violate their regulatory obligations. If broadcasters believe they should provide their viewers with additional context and information about Polls they have covered, they can now take those actions consistent with FCC regulations.”
This is Carr pretending to be important. He really likes when people are afraid of him and when the press talks about him. But as with his threats against ABC, this is an obvious violation of the First Amendment, an abuse of his office, and a giant turd of a legal case should he pursue it.
It’s worth noting (and it’s not something most press coverage discusses) that one benefit of Carr’s endless censorship saber rattling is that it obscures how much damage he’s doing on issues like media consolidation and consumer protection, stuff the corporate press couldn’t care less about.
The FCC’s broadcast news distortion rule, created in 1949, gives the agency the power to punish media companies for clear ethical violations involving an intentional, misleading 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 large bribe from a company or public official to kill a story. The FCC had only actually used the rule eight times between 1969 and 2019, and few of those actions actually resulted in serious, substantive punishment. It most certainly doesn’t apply to a right wing politician trying to censor news the President doesn’t like.
A bipartisan array of former FCC officials recently pointed out that the rule should probably be eliminated altogether, as it inherently risks violating First Amendment principles, chills journalistic speech, and as Carr demonstrates is easily abused by radical extremists.
In a statement, Anna Gomez, the FCC’s only Democratic Commissioner (because Republicans simply refuse to approve any others), reiterated that Carr’s threats are empty:
“Pollsters who intentionally mislead the public should answer for it, but broadcasters who report publicly available polling data should never be punished when a poll is wrong. FCC rules on news distortion or hoaxes do not apply to a station that reports this data in good faith.”
These Carr threats worked initially because companies were afraid of the President — or at least really liked tax cuts and deregulation, and didn’t want to be subject to costly legal harassment. But as Trump’s political power wanes those threats will continue to hold less and less weight, and corporations (as we’ve seen with both ABC and the BBC) will start showing more and more backbone.
You’d like to think Carr will be held accountable for his historic abuses of FCC authority and trampling of the First Amendment, but his most likely fate remains a high six figure gig at some telecom industry think tank where he comfortably spends the rest of his days finding creative ways to reduce competition for the large companies (AT&T, Comcast, Securus) he’s very clearly captured by.