In an interview with Nexstar’s NewsNation, Brendan Carr, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for FCC chairman, highlighted his commitment to “diversity of opinion” while also signaling he might have the regulator crack down on fact-checking efforts as part of a larger effort “to smash” the “censorship cartel.”
Carr made the remarks during a Dec. 2 interview with NewsNation host Chris Cuomo where he argued, “I think Americans have been seeing an unprecedented surge in censorship, particularly over the last couple of years.”
“As you said yourself, diversity of opinion is so important in this country, and it's gonna be one of my top priorities, is trying to smash this censorship cartel,” Carr added.
In discussing the definition of the “censorship cartel” and FCC’s role in combating misinformation, Carr also launched into a critique of fact-checking that could be used against broadcasters.
“Look, at the end of the day, trying to draw the lines between disinformation and misinformation is very fraught,“ Carr said. “At the end of the day, more often than not, people are slapping those labels on political speech they disagree with. I think what we should try to protect is core political speech, religious speech, scientific speech. I don't think we want, you know, the FCC or any entity to be sort of superintending a lot of these decisions. But we have a lot of these fact-checkers out there that are really just narrative checkers.
“I sent a letter recently to a company called NewsGuard that, in my view, has been at the forefront of this censorship cartel, but I think we need to return. But it's not just social media,“ Carr added. ”Look, we see it in media, as you've known from your career. You know, we've had too much bias in the media as well. This is an important issue. Broadcasters, for instance, have an obligation to serve the public interest, and a lot of people get skittish about that, but it’s the law. It’s not just my opinion, and something has to change. Bezos recently did that op-ed where he said the status quo was just not working for traditional media. Trust has absolutely cratered. It wasn't that long ago that mass media was the most trusted institution in America, and for a long time, and at least stayed above Congress in terms of trust, but it's recently fallen below Congress … something there is not working. I think the FCC needs to make sure that broadcasters are held to their public-interest obligations.”
In terms of his first priority as chair, Carr said: “I think Americans have been seeing an unprecedented surge in censorship, particularly over the last couple of years. Look, I think it accelerated during COVID-19. Any time you have an increase in government control, you necessarily have a decrease in free speech, it's fundamentally un-American. As you said yourself, diversity of opinion is so important in this country, and it’s gonna be one of my top priorities, is trying to smash this censorship cartel.”
In terms of how he plans to break the “censorship cartel” Carr said, “It's actually pretty straightforward. So you asked, who's part of this censorship cartel? Well, it's multifaceted. One, you've got a lot of these platforms that are just acting on their own to censor speech. But two, what we saw, particularly during the Biden administration, was pressure from government officials to censor speech as well. We also have a cohort of advertising and marketing agencies have been working together, in my view, to collude to crack down on free speech. That's an issue, I think, in part, for the Federal Trade Commission. So for instance, if you have companies that get together decide not to compete on a feature of business, including content moderation. That's possibly a problem under our competition laws, and in fact, some of the Federal Trade Commission commissioners have spoken about it. The FCC also administers Section 230, which is part of the Communications Act itself. That's the provision that a lot of these technology companies have used to silence diversion speech. I think the FCC can take a look at implementing that in a way that can promote more speech, not less. So there's a lot on the FCC plate that I would look forward to getting started on.”
More specifically in relation to Facebook and social media content moderation, which Trump, Carr and other conservatives have attacked as limiting free speech, Carr noted that “Section 230 does two things. One, if you leave someone else's speech up on your platform, like Facebook, it says Facebook isn't liable if that speech happens to be tortious in any way. I think that's a pretty good provision. It's what I call a pro-speech provision. The problem is a second portion of its C2 which says that these social media companies can censor, not just consistent with the First Amendment, whatever those bounds there are, but with these special 230 protections and courts have read immunities into that takedown provision that are found nowhere in the statutory text, I think we go back to the statute that will put us in much better stead with promoting a diversity of viewpoints.”
