U.S. senators peppered Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr with questions during a wide-ranging hearing exploring media censorship, the FCC’s oversight and Carr’s alleged intimidation tactics during the firestorm over ABC comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s comments earlier this fall.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called Wednesday’s hearing of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee following the furor over ABC’s brief suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” amid social media backlash over Kimmel’s insensitive remarks in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Walt Disney Co. leaders yanked Kimmel off the air Sept. 17, hours after Carr suggested that Disney-owned ABC should punish the late-night comedian for his remarks — or face FCC scrutiny. Soon, two major TV station groups announced that they were pulling Kimmel’s show, although both reinstated the program several days after ABC resumed production.
Progressives were riled by the President Trump-appointed chairman’s seeming willingness to go after broadcasters in an alleged violation of their First Amendment rights. At the time, a few fellow Republicans, including Cruz, blasted Carr for suggesting to ABC: “We can do this the easy way or hard way.”
Cruz, in September, said that Carr’s comments belonged in the mob-movie “Goodfellas.”
On Wednesday, Carr said his comments about Kimmel were not intended as threats against Disney or the two ABC-affiliated station groups that pre-empted Kimmel’s show.
The chairman argued the FCC had statutory authority to make sure that TV stations acted in the public interest, although Carr did not clarify how one jumbled sentence in Kimmel’s Sept. 15 monologue violated the broadcasters’ obligation to serve its communities.
Cruz was conciliatory on Wednesday, praising Carr’s work in his first year as FCC chairman. However, Democrats on the panel attempted to pivot much of the three-hour session into a public airing of the Trump administration’s desire to punish broadcasters whom the president doesn’t like — and Carr’s seeming willingness to go along.
Carr was challenged by numerous Democrats who suggested he was demonstrating fealty to the president rather than running the FCC as an independent licensing body.
Despite the landmark Communications Act of 1934, which created the FCC, the agency isn’t exactly independent, Carr and fellow Republican Commissioner Olivia Trusty testified.
The two Republicans said because Trump has the power to hire and fire commissioners, the FCC was more akin to other agencies within the federal government.
“Then is President Trump your boss?” asked Sen. Andy Kim (D-New Jersey). The senator then asked Carr whether he remembered his oath of office. Federal officials, including Carr, have sworn to protect the Constitution.
“The American people are your boss,” Kim said. “Have you ever had a conversation with the President or senior administration officials about using the FCC to go after critics?”
Carr declined to answer.
The lone Democrat on the FCC, Anna M. Gomez, was frequently at odds with her fellow commissioners, including during an exploration of whether she felt the FCC was doing Trump’s bidding in its approach to merger approvals.
Trump separately continued his rant on media organizations he doesn’t like, writing, in a Truth Social post that NBC News “should be ashamed of themselves in allowing garbage ‘interviews’” of his political rivals, in this case Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia).
Trump wrote that NBC and other broadcasters should pay “significant amounts of money for using the very valuable” public airwaves.
Earlier this year, FCC approval of the Larry Ellison family’s takeover of Paramount stalled for months until Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over his grievances with edits of a CBS “60 Minutes” pre-election interview with Kamala Harris.
“Without a doubt, the FCC is leveraging its authority over mergers and enforcement proceedings in order to influence content,” Gomez said.
Parts of the hearing devolved into partisan bickering over whether Democrats or Republicans had a worse track record of trampling on the First Amendment. Cruz and other Republicans referenced a 2018 letter, signed by three Democrats on the committee, which asked the FCC to investigate conservative TV station owner Sinclair Broadcast Group.
“Suddenly Democrats have discovered the First Amendment,” Cruz said. “Maybe remember it when Democrats are in power. The First Amendment is not a one way license for one team to abuse the power.
“We should respect the Free Speech of all Americans, regardless of party,” Cruz said.
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