WASHINGTON—The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau has reinstated complaints against three stations—Paramount Global’s WCBS-TV New York, Disney’s WPVI Philadelphia and NBCUniversal’s WNBC New York—reversing a recent order made by the former FCC chair denying the complaints on First Amendment grounds.
On January 16, FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel issued an order denying complaints against four stations, WPVI, WCBS-TV, WNBC and Fox-owned WTXF Philadelphia, which had faced complaints about biased news coverage.
In partially reversing that order, the FCC noted that the dismissal of the complaints were “issued prematurely based on an insufficient investigatory record for the station-specific conduct at issue.”
In a complaint against WCBS, the conservative Center for American Rights (CAR) alleged “news distortion” by CBS News relating to the editing of an interview with then-Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and asked the FCC to consider its complaint in its review of the Paramount Global deal with Skydance Media.
In the complaint against Disney’s WPVI Philadelphia, CAR alleged news distortion against the station based on live fact-checking by ABC News during a debate between President Donald Trump and then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
WNBC was also accused of biased coverage by CAR when Harris appeared on an episode of “Saturday Night Live” in October.
The FCC did not reinstate the complaint against Fox Corp.’s WTXF Philadelphia by the liberal Media and Democracy Project, which was one of the four dismissed by the Jan. 16 FCC order. MAD had claimed Fox Corp. was an unfit license holder given the inaccurate election coverage airing on its Fox News Channel denying President Joe Biden’s 2020 election.
Current FCC chair Brendan Carr has repeatedly accused CBS of bias, and said the FCC will take that issue into account when it reviews the pending merger of network parent Paramount Global and Skydance.
While he has tried to position himself as a “free speech” advocate of First Amendment rights, he has also indicated that the FCC will use the “public interest” regulatory requirements of broadcasters to examine potential bias in news operations during station license reviews. In addition, he has implied the regulator might crack down on fact-checking efforts as part of a larger effort “to smash” the “censorship cartel.”
The decision to reintroduce some of the complaints drew immediate condemnation from Democratic commissioner Anna M. Gomez.
“As I stated last week, we cannot allow our licensing authority to be weaponized to curtail freedom of the press,” Gomez wrote. “The First Amendment is a pillar of American democracy, and our country needs a press free from interference from regulators like me. In fact, the Communications Act explicitly prohibits the Commission from censoring broadcasters. We must respect the protections of the First Amendment and the restrictions in the Communications Act.”
In a Jan. 23 statement, CAR president Daniel Suhr applauded the FCC action reinstating the three FCC complaints the Center filed against ABC, CBS, and NBC:
"These are serious issues that deserve real resolution," Suhr said. "The prior chair’s last-minute actions were political, not based on a principled defense of the First Amendment. Free speech does not include blatantly distorting the news or violating longstanding commission rules.”
In contrast, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, criticised the move. Max Abrams, social media fellow at the Foundation argued that: “Reinstating these complaints is a transparent attempt to intimidate networks that are critical of Trump and control their speech. If it wasn’t obvious, just look at the fact that the only complaint Carr didn’t reinstate was against Fox."
