Brendan Carr had the screws put to him by CNBC host Sara Eisen over whether the FCC’s request for Disney-owned ABC to file their licensing renewal early infringed on the First Amendment.
On Friday, Eisen spoke with Carr and pressed him on the decision for the early renewal request on eight stations owned by ABC. The requests came quickly after Donald Trump again called for late night host Jimmy Kimmel to be fired after making a joke about First Lady Melania shortly before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and subsequent shooting. Carr insisted that the review was to look at the company’s DEI policies but Eisen pressed the FCC Chairman.
“I mean, you called for the early review of the broadcast licenses right after President Trump called for Jimmy Kimmel to be fired,” she said. “And there have been a number of instances where you and the president have been critical of what you’ve seen on ABC.”
Eisen later asked: “So you’re not trying to get them to fire Kimmel?”
You can watch the exchange yourself in the video below.
Carr again said the request came from them looking at specifically DEI practices and that there was no connection between the two. Eisen did not let it go and pointed out the last time the FCC asked for early license renewal came back in the 1980s. She then reiterated that many remained worried about the Free Speech implications behind the move so soon after Kimmel’s joke and Trump’s call for his firing.
“Every broadcaster in America is watching this proceeding, and the lesson they’re drawing is if you say something that the administration does not like, you will come after their broadcast license,” Eisen said.
Earlier this week, ABC accused the FCC of violating its First Amendment rights by demanding the early broadcast rights renewal. The network said it was submitting the renewal applications “under protest” in response to an “unlawful, arbitrary, and unconstitutional” order last month
“The Commission had not demanded early renewal in over five decades. And it has never before demanded simultaneous license renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a network as it has here,” the filing states. “The Order has no legitimate purpose. There is no information that the application will reveal that the Commission could not obtain through other means. The Order is inconsistent with a legitimate exercise of investigative authority and is plainly incompatible with the First Amendment.”
It added that the FCC’s order’s “true purpose and inescapable effect” is to “suppress speech—to ramp up toward possible license revocation and cause the Station and others to think twice before they say something the government might dislike.”
