The head of the Federal Communications Commission faced criticism on Wednesday from Democrats at his first appearance before Congress after pressuring broadcasters to take ABC late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel off the air in September.
President Trump has repeatedly pushed FCC Chair Brendan Carr to take action against US broadcasters, criticized news coverage and said he will have a role in whether a proposed merger between Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery should go forward.
During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin told Carr, “you used your position within the federal government to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air in a clear attempt to chill free speech. … The FCC is not a political weapon to be used against the president’s critics, and yet you’ve also used it to go after 60 Minutes, ‘Saturday Night Live’ and (late-night talk show host) Seth Meyers.”
ABC briefly suspended Kimmel’s show over comments he made about the Sept. 10 assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Hours before the suspension, Carr warned that local broadcasters who aired Kimmel could face fines or loss of licenses and said “it’s time for them to step up.”
In September, Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz sharply criticized Carr after the FCC chief threatened Disney and local broadcasters that were airing Kimmel’s show. Cruz said the comments were “dangerous as hell.”
Cruz said on Wednesday the government cannot “force private entities to take actions that the government cannot take directly. Government officials threatening adverse consequences for disfavored content is an unconstitutional coercion that chills protected speech.”
Carr defended his actions, saying he was enforcing the public interest standard at the direction of Congress. “We should be enforcing those rules and policies,” he said, adding that Democrats in Congress previously wrote letters to cable companies pressuring them to drop Fox News, One America News Network and Newsmax “because they disagree with the political perspectives of those cable channels.”
The FCC has not used the public interest standard to revoke broadcast licenses for more than three decades.
Sinclair and Nexstar Media Group both quickly ended a boycott of the Kimmel show.
“You intimidate the companies, they do what you want, and then you say, well, it was up to them,” Democratic Senator Ed Markey said during the hearing on Wednesday.
Trump’s criticism
Last month, Trump criticized an ABC News correspondent for asking Saudi Arabia’s crown prince about the 2018 killing of a Washington Post columnist and suggested the commission should move to revoke the broadcast licenses of Disney-owned ABC stations.
In July, the FCC approved the $8.4 billion merger between CBS parent Paramount Global and Skydance Media after Skydance agreed to ensure CBS’ news and entertainment programs were free of bias, and hire an ombudsman to review complaints and end diversity programs.
In January, Carr reinstated complaints about a CBS interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, a debate moderated by ABC News between then-President Joe Biden and Trump, and an appearance by Harris on Comcast-owned NBC’s Saturday Night Live shortly before the election.
