A group of former FCC chairs and top agency officials from both sides of the political aisle are calling on Brendan Carr to end the regulator’s early broadcast license review of ABC’s local stations.
In a filing on Tuesday, they argued that the proceeding is “an assault on free speech disguised as regulatory process” and a “grave violation of both the Communications Act and the Constitution.” They added that Carr “seeks to censor Disney’s and ABC’s speech and send a chilling message to all broadcasters: carry speech we don’t like at your peril.”
“The Commission initiated the early renewal process of all eight ABC-owned-and-operated stations one day after the President and First Lady criticized ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel for a joke he made about them,” the group wrote. “Public reporting and the notice establishing the procedures for this proceeding also suggest that the Chairman has prejudged the outcome of this proceeding and that the Commission may assert the power to terminate the stations’ licenses early. All this betrays that this proceeding is pretext for the Chairman’s continued campaign of suppressing disfavored speech.”
Though Carr has maintained the review is part of an ongoing investigation into Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies, he suggested during his monthly press conference that ABC’s decision to limit coverage of President Donald Trump’s primetime address may factor into the proceeding.
The group said it is “virtually unprecedented” and the “latest attack in a sustained campaign” by the FCC and Trump administration of “threatening legal sanctions against licensees whose speech President Trump dislikes.”
“As former Chairs, Commissioners, Chiefs of Staff, General Counsels and Bureau Chiefs, we call on the Commission to respect the constitutional and congressional prohibitions on its ‘power of censorship’ and terminate this proceeding,” they wrote.
They also said two conservative groups — the Center for American Rights and the Media Research Center — who are calling for ABC’s license renewals to be denied are asking the FCC to “interfere with the stations’ First Amendment-protected editorial discretion: word choices, fact-checks, time covering certain topics, personnel, and the licensees’ perceived viewpoints” and made requests that are “not legitimate subjects of FCC regulation.”
Their reply is one of more than 141,000 comments have been received in the station renewal proceeding. The deadline for submitting comments is Aug. 5.
Signatories of the filing include Mark Fowler and Dennis Patrick, who served as FCC chairmen under Ronald Reagan; Alfred Sikes, who was chairman under President George W. Bush; and Thomas Wheeler, who was chairman under Barack Obama.
Other former FCC officials include Kathryn Brown, who was FCC Chairman William Kennard’s chief of staff; former Republican Commissioner Rachelle Chong; Fowler’s legal adviser and chief of staff Jerald Fritz; former enforcement bureau chief Rosemary Harold; former media bureau chief William T. Lake; Wheeler’s former chief of staff Ruth Milkman; Patrick’s former chief of staff Peter Pitsch; former Democratic commissioner Gloria Tristani; and former general counsel Christopher J. Wright.
The group is represented in the filing by the Protect Democracy Project, Andrew Jay Schwartzman, Gigi Sohn of G Squared Strategies and Berin Szóka of Tech Freedom.
In addition to the broadcast license renewal review, the FCC has launched a separate investigation into “The View” over its petition to qualify for a “bona fide” news exemption from equal time rules.
