During today's Senate hearing, Brendan Carr denied the FCC is independent. Minutes later, someone edited the agency's website to remove the
Parker Molloy at The Present Age:
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr testified before the Senate Commerce Committee today, and I need to tell you about it. This was his first appearance before Congress since he threatened ABC back in September over Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night monologue about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The hearing was contentious. Democrats accused Carr of turning the FCC into a censorship arm of the Trump administration. Carr, a Trump loyalist, insisted he was just doing his job. But the wildest moment came when Sen. Ben Ray Luján asked Carr a simple question: Is the FCC an independent agency? Carr said no. “Not an independent agency, formally speaking,” were his exact words.
Here’s where it gets absurd. The FCC’s own website, at that very moment, described the commission as “an independent U.S. government agency overseen by Congress.” Within minutes of Carr’s answer, someone updated the website to remove the word “independent.” Sit with that for a second. A federal agency’s website was edited in real time during a congressional hearing to match what its chairman had just testified. When Sen. Luján asked Republican Commissioner Olivia Trusty whether that meant the website had been lying, she said she couldn’t speak to its contents. “I’ve not seen that,” she told him. Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat on the commission, had a different answer. When asked if the FCC is independent, she said yes, and added: “We should be.”
[...]
The chilling effect is the point
At today’s hearing, Sen. Ed Markey brought up another case that didn’t get nearly as much national attention: KCBS, a radio station in San Francisco. Back in January, KCBS reported on an ICE raid, describing the types of vehicles agents were driving. The station was reporting information that had been released by the mayor, a local city council member, and a community group. Standard local journalism. Conservatives got upset. Carr accused the station of failing to operate in the public interest and opened an investigation. The station’s owner, Audacy, responded by demoting a well-regarded anchor and dialing back political coverage for months. Reporters were discouraged from pursuing political or controversial topics and encouraged to focus on human interest stories instead. Doug Sovern, a veteran political journalist at the station, was sidelined after the investigation was announced. He retired in April. “’Chilling effect’ does not begin to describe the neutering of our political coverage,” he said.
Markey confronted Carr with this at the hearing. “The station demoted the anchor who first read that news report over the air and pulled back on its political coverage,” Markey said. “You got what you wanted.” This is how it works. Carr doesn’t need to actually revoke anyone’s broadcast license. He just needs to threaten it. The threat is enough. Companies with billions of dollars in pending mergers that need FCC approval aren’t going to risk antagonizing the guy who can tank their deals. They’ll self-censor. They’ll punish their own journalists preemptively. The chilling effect is the point. As Gomez put it in September, when Carr first went after Kimmel: “The threat is the point.” Al Sikes, a Republican former FCC chairman who served under George H.W. Bush, called Carr’s approach “mobster” tactics. “What we’re seeing right now is new boundaries that are being set on the exercise of authority: punishing those that you don’t like and ensconcing those that you do.”
FCC Chair and MAGA henchman Brendan Carr admitted in front of the Senate Commerce Committee yesterday that the organization is no longer an independent government agency.
This is authoritarianism in action by the Trump Regime.
See Also:
The Guardian: FCC chair suggests agency is not independent amid fears of Trump power-grab
