The lone Democrat on the FCC is urging broadcasters to push back on Chairman Brendan Carr’s latest statements saying stations airing what he deemed as “fake polls” could be subject to regulatory reviews.
Earlier this week, Carr took to social media to lay out his plans to use the FCC’s news distortion policies to go after broadcast stations that he thinks are airing fake polls about the president and the midterm elections.
“Many journalists and broadcasters have been amplifying or airing these Polls without regard to basic journalistic ethics and without informing the public that those Polls lack a scientific, accurate, or even real basis,” Carr wrote.
“The FCC takes these issues seriously,” he added. “Broadcasters are prohibited by the terms of their federal licenses from engaging in News Distortion or promoting Broadcast Hoaxes. It is important that broadcasters comply with their public interest obligations. After all, the country benefits greatly when Americans can trust and rely on the media to report the news fairly and accurately.”
In a letter to the National Association of Broadcasters’ president and CEO Curtis LeGeyt, Anna M. Gomez – the sole Democrat on the FCC – made it clear that broadcast stations should push back on Carr’s warning.
“Absent that level of clear evidence, this commission has no authority to act,” Gomez wrote on Friday. “Reporting the results of a poll this administration happens to dislike does not come close to meeting those standards.”
Carr has been on a hard push to investigate stations through the first year of Donald Trump’s second term – including ABC, following its dust-up with late night host Jimmy Kimmel last year following the Charlie Kirk assassination. Gomez wrote that while the NAB has not pushed back too hard, she was happy to see them stand against Carr where they could and hopes that would continue.
“Despite the NAB staying largely quiet through the first year of this censorship and control campaign, I want to acknowledge that you have not stayed completely silent, and for that I am grateful,” she shared.
“I would not be doing my job if I did not say plainly that the volume of that response has not yet matched the scale of what your members are facing,” Gomez added. “An industry confronting a coordinated effort to turn licensing authority into leverage over election-year coverage needs more than a couple of tempered statements. Your members deserve to hear from their leading voice with the same clarity and urgency that their First Amendment rights, and their bottom line, call for.”
