Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr issued a stern warning to broadcasters Saturday, threatening to revoke government-issued licenses if they run what the federal agency deems “fake news.”
The warning, alongside which Carr included a screenshot of a post by President Donald Trump inveighing against legacy media coverage of the Iran war, was just the latest salvo from an official who since becoming FCC chairman at the outset of Trump’s second term has relished the role of media enforcer.
“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 in a post on X. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”
Carr said “changing course” would be a savvy business decision for broadcasters — though he did not mention any by name — given “trust in legacy media has now fallen to an all time low of just 9% and are ratings disasters.” It’s unclear what trust metrics Carr is citing, but Gallup found in 2020 that 9 percent of Americans have “a great deal” of trust in mass media, though another 31 percent said they had “a fair amount” of trust.
“When a political candidate is able to win a landslide election victory after in the face of hoaxes and distortions, there is something very wrong,” Carr said, presumably talking about President Donald Trump, who received 312 electoral votes and 49.9 percent of the national vote in the 2024 presidential election. “It means the public has lost faith and confidence in the media. And we can’t allow that to happen. Time for change!”
Carr’s post elicited backlash from Democratic politicians and press freedom advocates, who have long criticized the administration’s frequent insistence that adversarial or unflattering coverage is “fake.”
“If Trump doesn’t like your coverage of the war, his FCC will pull your broadcast license. That is flagrantly unconstitutional,” Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, responded on X.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said Carr’s statement is a “clear directive to provide positive war coverage or else licenses may not be renewed.”
Will Caley, legal director at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, called Carr’s statement “dangerous” in a statement to The Washington Post.
“Brendan Carr’s authoritarian warning — that networks risk their broadcasting licenses for Iran war reporting that the government doesn’t like — is outrageous,” Caley said. “When the government demands the press become a state mouthpiece under the threat of punishment, something has gone very wrong.”
Carr’s comments appeared to build on a separate post Saturday by Trump on Truth Social in which he condemned the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets over their coverage of damage to U.S. military aircraft at a base in Saudi Arabia, calling them “Lowlife ‘Papers’ and Media” whose reporting amounted to wanting the United States “to lose the War.” Trump did not mention any broadcasters. Spokespeople for the Times and the Journal did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House did not immediately comment on whether Trump included any broadcasters in his criticism of this line of coverage.
Scrutiny over the Iran war, which began with a U.S.-Israeli attack last month, has escalated the administration’s pressure campaign, in which Carr has become a key participant, against legacy media — although the FCC only oversees radio and television stations such as local NBC affiliates or NPR member stations that license publicly owned airwaves to broadcast programming.
He has evoked condemnation from free speech advocates for pressuring Disney’s ABC and its affiliate stations to temporarily take comedian Jimmy Kimmel off the air, expanding the equal-time rule to cover daytime and late-night talk shows, launching investigations into numerous media companies, and overseeing a lengthy merger review of Skydance’s purchase of CBS parent company Paramount that included the network appointing a conservative ombudsman to review content.
A bipartisan group of FCC commissioners including chairs from both parties petitioned the agency in November to repeal its news distortion policy — a rarely used instrument that has been at the heart of Carr’s media campaign — arguing that even without enforcement action, “the specter of government interference alone chills broadcasters’ speech.” At the time, Carr said the petition was “quite rich” coming from people who, he said, censored conservatives. A spokesman for Carr did not immediately respond to a question about whether Carr’s remarks were targeted at specific broadcasters.
Trump spent much of Friday and Saturday attacking news organizations as well. He shared an infographic on Truth Social titled “President Trump Is Reshaping the Media,” cataloguing the departures of prominent journalists and TV anchors under a section labeled “Gone,” which also includes “massive layoffs” at The Post.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth complained Friday about what he called “fake news from CNN,” over a report indicating that the administration underestimated the war’s impact on the Strait of Hormuz. He also said the network would improve once Skydance Paramount chief David Ellison — whose pending purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery includes CNN and requires Trump administration approval — takes it over.
CNN Chairman and CEO Mark Thompson pushed back in a statement Friday.
“We stand by our journalism,” Thompson said. “Politicians have an obvious motive for claiming that journalism which raises questions about their decisions is false. At CNN our only interest is in telling the truth to our audiences in the U.S. and around the world and no amount of political threats or insults is going to change that.”
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