Seven former FCC commissioners — including five Republicans — are urging the Federal Communications Commission to rescind a 1949 News Distortion Policy that they say has been recently weaponized “to chill press freedom and silence critical journalism.”
“The news distortion policy violates First Amendment principles, chills broadcaster speech and can be exploited for partisan purposes,” the petitioners wrote in their Thursday message with Protect Democracy and TechFreedom. They also noted that they are speaking out after FCC chairman Brendan Carr invoked the “outdated” policy alongside President Donald Trump to threaten ABC and Jimmy Kimmel in September (in addition to a similar move made against CBS and “60 Minutes” in February).
“As the Supreme Court has made clear, the government has no legitimate role in un-biasing or balancing the media. The news distortion policy allows the government to threaten censorship of speech it doesn’t like; it cannot stand,” former FCC chair Mark Fowler said in a statement.
“The Commission should focus on ensuring that all Americans are connected and have access to information and ideas — not imposing on broadcasters its vision of what presentation of the news is correct. The news distortion policy is being used by the current FCC leadership as a tool of speech coercion and that abuse will not stop until the agency repeals it,” fellow former chair Tom Wheeler added.
The coalition also includes former commissioners Andrew Barrett, Rachelle Chong, Ervin Duggan, Dennis Patrick and Alfred Sikes, as well as former commission senior staffers like, Christopher Wright, Kathryn Brown, Jerald Fritz and Peter Pitsch. It was filed by longtime consumer advocates Gigi Sohn and Andrew Jay Schwartzman.
Together, the group insists that the American government should not be involved in eliminating news bias, pointing to the FCC’s own warnings of “omnipresent government censorship” in the 1970s.
If the FCC refuses to rescind the news distortion policy entirely, reaffirm the power of the Communications Act and clarify the limitations of their Hoax Rule, the petitioners stated they would implore Congress “to step in with legislation that bars the FCC from policing media bias — protecting free speech for generations to come.”
