As President Donald Trump continues to enact his agenda across the whole of the federal government, even some conservatives are warning against overreach.
Fourteen right-of-center organizations urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to exercise restraint when assessing TV networks' broadcast licenses.
"We, the undersigned conservative and free-market organizations, write in
continued support of your work to lift the regulatory burdens that have long weighed on America's communications sector," according to a letter last week to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. "From media and broadband to the space economy, your deregulatory record is helping unleash investment and growth, and we are grateful for your leadership in getting government out of the way."
"In that same spirit," the coalition wrote, "we respectfully urge" the FCC "to preserve the well-established, routine, predictable, and presumptive nature of broadcast license renewal."
In April, the FCC announced it was "investigating" the ABC network, as well as parent company Disney, for "unlawful discrimination," among other potential legal violations. As a result, the FCC would review Disney's broadcast licenses for renewal.
The FCC routinely reviews broadcast licenses that are up for renewal, but none of Disney's were set to expire until at least 2028. Calling them in early suggests the agency looked to make life difficult for the broadcaster.
It was this process that last week's letter—written by such organizations as Americans for Tax Reform, the Center for Individual Freedom, Young Voices, and the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste—addressed, asking that Carr be completely even-handed in his review.
"We take no position on the merits of any particular application before the
Commission in any pending matter," the groups wrote. "Our concern is that establishing precedents of non-routine renewal creates a powerful lever that future FCCs—including ones hostile to conservative, religious, or otherwise disfavored broadcasters—would be all too willing to pull. The surest protection against that future is to keep the renewal process predictable today."
Indeed, when the FCC announced the early renewal process, free speech advocates worried the government was simply using federal power to hurt ABC personalities that are too critical of Trump.
In particular, Carr has stressed repeatedly that broadcasters must operate in "the public interest." In practice, though, that can mean pretty much anything Carr says it means—and he seems to agree with Trump, that it means whatever Trump says it means.
The coalition noted that Congress established a very straightforward process in which broadcast licenses are renewed except in the event of serious violations. The FCC "has historically reserved non-routine renewal for genuinely extraordinary circumstances, such as failures that go to a station's basic capacity to maintain its operation or malfeasance," they wrote. "Preserving that high and content-neutral bar is precisely what keeps the Commission out of the business of judging speech."
These 14 groups are hardly the only ones on the political right who have objected to Carr's methods. Last year, when ABC host Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Carr threatened to get involved, telling ABC, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way." ABC suspended Kimmel, though it reinstated him the following week.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas), a reliable Trump ally, took issue with that level of overt jawboning. "Let me tell you: If the government gets in the business of saying, 'We don't like what you, the media, have said; we're going to ban you from the airwaves if you don't say what we like,' that will end up bad for conservatives," Cruz warned, calling Carr's intervention "unbelievably dangerous."
"Under your leadership, the Commission has made real progress in getting
government out of the way, and broadcasters are responding with new deals
and investment," the coalition advised in its letter to Carr. "Keeping license renewal routine, predictable, and presumptive is consistent with that agenda. It protects investment, respects the framework Congress enacted, and serves to deny future Commissions tools and precedents to wield against conservative media."
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