FCC Chairman Brendan Carr on Monday accused Democrats of “projection and distortion,” noting that Democrats in the Biden administration, in Congress, and elsewhere have demanded that the agency censor disfavored television networks and “everyday Americans.”
Carr spoke at the Concordia conference in New York after Disney had decided to pull Jimmy Kimmel’s television show after he said that the accused Charlie Kirk assassin was “part of MAGA.”
This has led to Democrats, and even some Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), to claim that this is an attack on free speech.
Carr joked that the American people have not had such interest in the Federal Communications Commission since the agency ended the Obama-era “net neutrality” regulations which led CNN to write a fear-mongering headline, declaring it the “end of the internet as we know it.”
The FCC chairman wrote, “I think those claims have as much factual basis as we’re seeing right now with Jimmy Kimmel.”
He added, “There are a lot of Democrats out there that are engaged in a campaign of projection and distortion.”
He noted that some Senate Democrats have claimed he threatened to revoke the licenses of Disney and ABC, which he said “did not happen in any way, shape, or form.”
Carr then explained that there is a balance between national programmers such as Disney and Comcast and local television stations on what programming should be aired on affiliate television stations.
He explained, “When you have a broadcast license, there’s a public interest standard, which means you have to operate consistently with the public interest, and one of the things that the FCC has in our case law and our precedent is this concept of a news distortion complaint.”
He continued:
What I spoke about last week, when concerns are raised about news distortion, there’s a way, there’s an easy way, for parties to address that, to work that out, and that takes place between television stations licensed by the FCC and what we call national programmers like Disney. They work that out and it doesn’t need to be worked by the FCC. Now, if they don’t, there’s a way to work that out that is not as easy, they can file a complaint at the FCC, and the FCC, by law, as set up by Congress, has to adjudicate that complaint.
What I’ve been very clear with the Jimmy Kimmel episode, is the FCC, and myself in particular, have expressed no view on the ultimate merits, had something like that been filed, what our take would be one way or the other. One of the things we’re trying to do in a general matter at the FCC is to empower local TV stations to serve the needs of local communities.
“You have national programmers like Disney, like Comcast, like Paramount, that are not licensed by the FCC, that have no public interest obligation, and they provide a lot of the primetime shows that the licensed TV stations put out over the air,” he added.
Carr argued, “What has happened over the years, is that the national programmers have exerted more and more control and pressure on the local TV stations. They don’t feel like they can push back on the national programmers, even when they think there is some content that they don’t think, in their judgement, not my judgment, makes sense for the local communities.”
The FCC chairman said, “Those local TV stations, for the first time in a long time, stood up and said we don’t want to run that program at least right now.”
In June, Carr moved to reform the agency’s broadcast rules to boost local journalism and rebalance the relationship between national programmers and local TV stations, as first reported by Breitbart News.
Carr wrote last December to Disney that ABC is “attempting to extract onerous financial and operational concessions from local broadcast TV stations under the threat of terminating long-held affiliations, which could result in blackouts and other harms to local consumers of broadcast news and content.”
A former FCC aide told Breitbart News, “The FCC is taking further steps to empower local broadcasters by lifting the national ownership cap. This will further enable broadcasters like Nexstar and Sinclair to protect the interests of their community. President Trump and his FCC are leading a much needed media counterrevolution.”
Carr then noted that many of the same Democrats crying foul about his actions have actually called to censor opposing views.
He noted that Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and other congressional Democrats wrote to the FCC during Trump’s first term in office, demanding that the agency revoke Sinclair’s broadcast licenses. He added that the FCC, during Biden’s time in office, did not renew licenses for Sinclair.
In March 2023, then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) called on Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch to direct his network’s hosts to “stop spreading false election narratives.”
In 2021, Democrats pressured cable, satellite, and streaming providers’ decision to carry Fox News, One America News Network, and Newsmax, accusing those news stations of serving as “misinformation rumor mills and conspiracy theory hotbeds that produce content that leads to real harm.”
He noted that the Biden White House pressured social media companies to censor “everyday Americans.” He added that Democrat bluster is all “projection and distortion.”
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