One common consequence of war is to make censorship more politically tempting, which makes it imperative to call out government efforts to chill free speech in moments like this.
President Donald Trump complained over the weekend on social media about a “misleading headline” that he said overstated the damage to United States warplanes from an Iranian strike in Saudi Arabia. His Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, sprung to attention, amplifying the president’s post and threatening broadcasters. Carr, who met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, said they will “lose their licenses” if they don’t “operate in the public interest.”
The message to broadcasters such as NBC, ABC and CBS is clear: They might face regulatory reprisals, up to being forced off the air, for casting the Iran war in a negative light — or as Carr puts it, engaging in “news distortions.” Presumably, coverage favorable to the war, even if distorted, would be in the public interest.
Trump subsequently announced his delight that Carr is “looking at the licenses of some of these Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations.”
Remember when President Joe Biden’s administration tried to create a “Disinformation Governance Board” to monitor political discourse? The effort was correctly abandoned after conservatives blasted it as a wannabe “Ministry of Truth.” Now Carr wants to give the FCC the same function, but with more teeth.
Fortunately, some Republicans want to avoid centralized control of information even when their side is in power. Asked about Carr’s comments on Fox News, Sen. Ron Johnson (Wisconsin) said: “I do not like the heavy hand of government, no matter who’s wielding it. So no, I would rather the federal government stay out of the private sector as much as possible.”
Carr defends his political meddling by pointing to a 1969 Supreme Court decision that upheld the FCC’s “fairness doctrine” on the ground that the government owns broadcast frequencies. But that case was narrowly focused on the right of reply to an on-air attack. In any case, the fairness doctrine was repealed in 1987. Cable and the internet have radically changed the communications landscape since then. Whatever relevance the “public interest” standard has to modern broadcasting, it does not mean Middle East coverage must please the president.
This isn’t the first time an administration has tried to wield the FCC to suppress disfavored points of view. Historian Paul Matzko has described how President John F. Kennedy’s administration, incensed by right-wing radio’s coverage of his Cold War policy, deliberately used the fairness doctrine to drive stations off the air.
Conservatives learned from that experience — and many others — the dangers of an overzealous administrative state. In a perfect world, liberals would take the same lessons from Carr’s attempted abuses, and a bipartisan coalition would vote to abolish the FCC.
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