In the course of an otherwise anodyne Senate committee hearing where its commissioners were testifying, the Federal Communications Commission removed the word “independent” from a description of the agency on its own website to line up with its chairman’s live remarks.
Just minutes earlier, Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-New Mexico), waving a screenshot of the commission’s website, asked Brendan Carr, its Republican chairman, about the agency’s status.
“Just so you know, Brendan, on your website it just simply says, man, the FCC’s independent,” Luján said. “This isn’t a trick question.”
The Trump administration has removed board members at several agencies, challenging a long-standing tradition that protected their positions and provided them some insulation from politics. The Supreme Court appears poised to adopt President Donald Trump’s view that he is free to dismiss such officials, setting a precedent that would enhance the power of the presidency.
“The FCC is not an independent agency, formally speaking,” Carr said Wednesday, echoing the administration’s view.
Luján suggested in response that if the agency’s website was “lying,” it should be edited. Seemingly within minutes of the back and forth, the change had been made.
A person familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an unannounced change, confirmed that the language was altered during the hearing following Luján’s questions. The change was first noticed by an Axios reporter.
After the hearing, an FCC spokesman said in a statement: “With the change in Administration earlier this year, the FCC’s website and materials required updating. That work continues to ensure that they reflect the positions of the agency’s new leadership.”
Luján said in a statement after the hearing that “Chairman Carr continues to fail the American people by treating the independent FCC as an extension of the President’s corrupt agenda.”
Anna M. Gomez, the lone Democrat among the three FCC commissioners, said in a statement after the hearing: “No edit to a website can erase the long-standing congressional intent to create a multiparty, independent regulatory agency like the FCC that is accountable to Congress and the American people, not the whims of the White House.”
Carr’s appearance Wednesday before the Senate Commerce Committee was the first time he was called to testify on Capitol Hill since he criticized late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel in September, prompting the comedian’s week-long suspension by the Walt Disney Co., which owns the ABC network.
Questions about the FCC’s independence were raised in part to probe whether Carr is carrying out the president’s agenda, particularly with regard to media companies that he has repeatedly criticized. The agency’s authority over the news media is limited to doling out broadcast spectrum licenses to local television and radio stations, plus some power to intervene in mergers when those licenses change hands.
That remit allowed Carr to become a central player in David Ellison’s Skydance taking over CBS parent company Paramount this summer. Paramount paid $16 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Trump over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris, installed an ombudsman with Republican Party ties and pledged to eliminate diversity initiatives that Carr has railed against.
Carr spent much of Wednesday’s hearing defending himself from Democrats’ allegations of censorship with regard to Kimmel’s suspension from the airwaves in September, citing his authority to enforce the FCC’s mandate to ensure that broadcasters act in the public interest.
Carr’s pointed critique of the late-night host’s remarks after conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing prompted affiliate station owners Sinclair and Nexstar to preempt “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” and Disney and ABC to shut the show down for a week. Nexstar is seeking FCC approval for a $6.2 billion merger with Tegna, for which it would need the agency to raise the national ownership cap that limits how many people nationwide one station owner can reach.
“We can do this the hard way or the easy way,” Carr counseled Disney in an appearance on Benny Johnson’s right-wing podcast after Kimmel’s statements but before his suspension.
Critics cast Carr’s involvement as the government strong-arming disfavored speech, a criticism that undergirded senators’ questions during the hearing. In a recent letter, a bipartisan contingent of former FCC chairs urged Carr to stop invoking the FCC’s little-used news distortion policy, saying it was not compatible with the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech and free press.
Gomez and Republican Commissioner Olivia Trusty also testified at the hearing but faced fewer questions and less pointed ones than Carr did.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who chairs the committee, had previously likened Carr’s behavior in the Kimmel matter to that of a cinema gangster. “That’s right out of ‘Goodfellas,’” Cruz said on his podcast at the time. “That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar. ‘God, nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.’” Other Republican senators including Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul (Kentucky), Todd Young (Indiana), and Dave McCormick (Pennsylvania) also expressed frustration with Carr.
Cruz avoided pressing Carr directly on the Kimmel incident at Wednesday’s hearing, instead directing his furor toward previous instances when he alleged Democrats overstepped, including during Sinclair’s 2017 attempted merger with Tribune Broadcasting, abandoned a year later. Nexstar later swooped in to buy Tribune.
“Jimmy Kimmel is angry, overtly partisan and profoundly unfunny,” Cruz said. “Democrat or Republican, we cannot have the government arbitrating truth or opinion.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) asked Carr if he should use his position to intimidate media companies.
“Any licensee that operates on the public airwaves has a responsibility to comply with the public-interest standard,” Carr responded.
Will Oremus contributed to this report.
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