Carr has made it clear that he wants the FCC punish newscasters which he perceives as unfair to Trump or Republicans in general. He claimed that NBC put Harris on Saturday night live before the election was “a clear and brazen effort to evade the FCC’s equal time rule,” even though NBC gave Trump two free 60-second messages to comply with the rule.
Carr too told Fox News who is interested in investigating the complaint against CBS when the FCC reviews a pending deal involving Skydance and Paramount, which owns and operates 28 local CBS Television Network television stations. “I’m pretty sure the complaint about CBS news distortion 60 minutes “The transcript is something that will likely come up in the context of the FCC’s review of that transaction,” Carr said.
Carr “intends to weaponize the FCC”
After Rosenworcel dismissed the complaints, the Center for American Rights said it would continue fighting. “We fundamentally believe that several actions taken by the three major networks were partisan, dishonest, and designed to support Vice President Harris in her bid to become president,” the group said in a statement provided to Ars last week. “We will continue to seek ways to ensure that the American public is protected from media manipulation of our Republic. The First Amendment does not protect intentional misrepresentation or fraud.”
In a statement applauding Carr’s reversal today, the group said Rosenworcel’s “last-minute actions were political, not based on a principled defense of the First Amendment.”
The networks have denied accusations of bias. “Former President Donald Trump accuses 60 Minutes of misleading editing of our Oct. 7 interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. That’s false,” CBS saying. “60 minutes gave an excerpt of our interview to Face the nation who used a longer section of his answer than that of 60 minutes. The same question. Same answer. But a different part of the answer.”
Rosenworcel last week also rejected a petition to deny a license renewal for WTXF-TV in Philadelphia, a Fox owned and operated station. The Media and Democracy Project’s petition alleged that Fox intentionally distorted the news with false reports of fraud in the 2020 election that Trump lost.
Rosenworcel said the complaints and the petition he dismissed “come from all corners, right and left, but what they have in common is that they are asking the FCC to penalize broadcast television stations because they don’t like the behavior, the content or the coverage of the stations”. Yesterday, advocacy group Public Knowledge saying that “by reinstating only those complaints that suit his partisan agenda, Chairman Carr has made clear that he intends to use the FCC as a weapon to threaten political speech and news coverage with which he disagrees” .