WASHINGTON—In a wide-ranging press conference, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr had both good and bad news for broadcasters, stressing that he wants to “empower local broadcasters” while issuing stern warnings that the agency would vigorously enforce the public-interest standard when it comes to news coverage.
During the conference, Carr also issued strong criticism of broadcast network news operations; said he was "particularly interested" in the FCC’s ongoing investigation of The Walt Disney Co.’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices; insisted there was no relationship between President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against CBS and the FCC review of the Paramount-Skydance deal; said the agency would consider removing broadcast licenses for violations of the public-interest standard; contended that the agency’s past unwillingness to enforce the public-interest standard was wrong; laid out some of his upcoming priorities; and said recent court rulings would not hamstring the FCC’s enforcement efforts.
After strongly criticizing network broadcast news operations for having lost the trust of the American people, Carr said: "One of the big things I'm trying to do with my media policy is to empower those local broadcasters to serve the needs of their local communities. Localism is one of the key [things guiding the FCC’s] … media policy … I think it's important to separate in people’s minds the difference between national programmers and the local broadcasters. Let's empower those local broadcasters …There's potentially lots of things that we can do to make sure that they feel like they have the freedom to serve the needs of their local communities.”
One area he highlighted was affiliation agreements. “I wrote a letter, actually, the end of last year to ABC on that to look at ways in which affiliation agreements potentially are being used to exercise potentially too much control over local broadcasters,“ he said. “We want to make sure that these arrangements between national programmers, ABC, NBC, CBS and local broadcasters enable a healthy TV broadcast media ecosystem. We don't want local broadcasters to ultimately go the way of newspapers, and when you look at the current dynamic, I'm not sure it's entirely healthy. So I want strong local broadcasters that feel empowered to serve their local communities. I think if you look at a lot of what we’re doing on media, it can be explained by trying to drive towards that goal.”
Carr also argued that the agency intends to “vigorously” enforce the public interest standard on broadcast news content.
“Broadcasters have a very unique position in the market when it comes to other entities,” he said. “They are licensed by the FCC. When you license someone to operate, you're necessarily prohibiting others from using those airways. Because of that, they have a public-interest obligation. And I think over the years, the FCC has largely stepped back from enforcing the public interest standard … I don’t think that's correct. I think given the unique benefits that come from a federal broadcast license, it's important for the FCC to actually hold these entities accountable to the public interest. And there’s a lot of rules and regulations that flow from that news distortion is a piece of it, and I believe that the FCC should be vigorously enforcing the public interest.”
“The agenda that we're driving at,” he added, “the North Star is, we want these local broadcasters to feel empowered to actually serve the interests of their local communities and not simply become a pass-through for, you know, nationwide content coming principally from Hollywood and New York. We want localism. I think that's important, that we empower our local broadcasters to do that.”
During the conference, Carr denied there was any coordination between the FCC in its investigations of CBS’s “60 Minutes” and CBS stations for news distortion and Trump, who has filed a lawsuit seeking damages totaling $20 billion from Paramount Global, the owner of CBS.
In response to a question about the Trump lawsuit, the status of the FCC review of the Paramount-Skydance merger and its investigation into “60 Minutes,” Carr said the FCC was not part of the Trump litigation and “there's been no discussions” with the White House about it.
In terms of the Paramount deal, he said: “We are getting close to the informal 180-day clock. I think we're somewhere in the 160s but, you know, we're just running our normal process across a lot of different transactions right now, and we're just going to apply the law.”
Carr also argued that the recent decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a $57 million fine imposed by the Federal Communications Commission against AT&T for violating the privacy of its customers’ location data would not limit the agency’s enforcement efforts.
The case is notable in that the Court justified its decision in part by citing SEC v. Jarkesy, a 2023 Supreme Court decision. That case severely restricts regulatory agencies from levying civil monetary fines through the administrative process. Some legal experts said that ruling, which was cited by the 5th Circuit, could call “into question whether any federal regulatory agency…can bring in-house proceedings to enforce civil penalties.”
“We've already submitted filings in those other circuits…expressing our view that we disagree with the Fifth Circuit,” Carr said. “So our position continues to be that the FCC can impose fines, impose license revocations, or full suite of potential remedies as to broadcasters and others, notwithstanding the Fifth Circuit decision…in part because the FCC has a mechanism in our statute where people can get a trial after the FCC administrative proceedings…We disagree ultimately with the conclusion there, particularly as it applies to other circuits.”
When asked if the FCC would consider revoking broadcast licenses as a result of its investigations into news content that violated the public interest standard, Carr admitted that would be a severe punishment, “a death sentence,” he said.
“Well, [I] don't get sort of too far down the speculation path, but ultimately, you know, license revocations is a tool that the FCC has in its toolkit,” Carr said. “It’s long been viewed as sort of the regulatory death penalty. So it’s a pretty high bar to me to go down that path, but it is, you know, one of the options the FCC has. And we’re, you know, continuing to take a vigorous look at the public-interest standard and making sure that the FCC enforces it. We’ve opened lots of investigations so far. We’re going to see where they go. We've looked at Disney and ABC, in particular, for some of their DEI practices. There’s some concerning things we've seen there about potential discrimination that we are continuing to run down inside the building, and we'll see where that investigation on Disney and ABC goes … There’s some concerning elements there about potentially making race-based and gender-based discriminatory decisions. And we still have to let that play out in terms of the process, but that’s one where I’m particularly interested to see where it goes.”
