\n<\/p>\n
D<\/span>uring a ceremony at the White House late last week honoring the US Naval Academy football team, Donald Trump gave a shoutout to the man he said was \u201cperhaps the most powerful man in this room\u201d: Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission chairman.<\/p>\n \u201cYou are doing some job,\u201d Trump said. \u201cHe\u2019s trying to make the fake news real and respected again, which is not an easy job.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump then made a claim that a large number of press freedom groups and first amendment advocates would sharply disagree with, telling Carr: \u201cEverybody in the room \u2013 everybody in this whole country \u2013 is watching what you\u2019re doing and we appreciate it.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s undeniable, however, that the country\u2019s attention is fixed on Carr, 47, to a degree that is highly unusual for the chairman of a historically independent agency tasked with regulating telecommunications and dealing with wonky matters like spectrum allocation.<\/p>\n Carr generated a national news cycle earlier this month after reposting Trump\u2019s complaints about media coverage of the Iran war and seemingly threatening the licenses of broadcasters \u201cthat are running hoaxes and news distortions\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cBroadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not,\u201d Carr wrote in a widely shared post on X, echoing comments he has made previously. Carr\u2019s post drew condemnation from congressional Democrats, but also from a prominent Republican senator, Ron Johnson, who espoused his support of press freedom and said: \u201cI do not like the heavy hand of government, no matter who\u2019s wielding it.\u201d<\/p>\n It was not the first time Carr\u2019s threatening tone \u2013 and warnings to broadcasters about losing their licenses \u2013 has generated controversy. In September 2025, he drew bipartisan backlash for pressuring television stations to \u201ctake action\u201d against the ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over comments he made about the slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk. (He later claimed that he never \u201cthreatened\u201d networks.)<\/p>\n Television licenses are given to local stations, not national networks. And while no licenses are up for renewal until at least 2028, Carr has said that the FCC has the legal right to \u201ccall in licenses for early renewal\u201d. He could specifically target the licenses of stations directly owned and operated by conglomerates like Disney-owned ABC and NBC.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though these threats are very legally weak and really there\u2019s no legal basis for these threats, it doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re harmless,\u201d Anna M Gomez, the lone Democrat-appointed commissioner on the FCC, said in an interview. \u201cNewsrooms are feeling the pressure. They don\u2019t need to wait for the FCC to take some enforcement action to feel pressure here.\u201d<\/p>\n During an FCC meeting last month, Carr confirmed that the agency had opened an investigation into the ABC day-time talk show The View for allegedly violating equal time rules by hosting the Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico without his rivals being given a platform. Since then, the number of politicians who have appeared on The View \u2013 which ABC has long characterized as a news program, and therefore presumptively exempt from the regulations \u2013 has reportedly declined.<\/p>\n Like Trump, Carr has expressed no regrets over comments he has made that have been perceived as retaliation for reporting critical of the Trump administration. If anything, Carr-directed outrage from the mainstream media and Democratic politicians seems to make Trump like him even more. Carr is also creative in his media-bashing, saying in February that \u201cthe American people have more trust in gas station sushi than they do in the national news media.\u201d (It wasn\u2019t the first time he had made that jab.)<\/p>\n \u201cThe networks should not be an arm of the Democratic party,\u201d said Daniel Suhr, who has filed numerous complaints against television networks in his role as president of the conservative Center for American Rights. \u201cSaying so isn\u2019t an attack on press freedom \u2013 it\u2019s a comparison between reality and the longstanding FCC goal of viewpoint diversity on the public airwaves.\u201d<\/p>\n Ahead of a monthly FCC meeting on Thursday, the advocacy organization Free Press paid for an electronic billboard to drive around the commission\u2019s building with a photo of Carr labeled as \u201cCensorship Czar\u201d. Schmoozing with reporters before the meeting, the gregarious and outgoing Carr noted that the organization had used an old photo in which he had more hair.<\/p>\n During a press conference after the meeting, Carr said his \u201cnorth star in media\u201d was taking away influence from the coastal media giants: \u201cHow do we constrain the power of these national programmers and re-empower local broadcasts?\u201d<\/p>\n Still, whether local stations are owned by national media conglomerates or merely have affiliate deals with them, Carr said they were required to operate in the public interest.<\/p>\n \u201cIf there ends up being an instance in which an affiliate or owned-and-operated station isn\u2019t operating in the public interest, of course, license revocation is something that is always on the table,\u201d he told the Guardian. \u201cIf it\u2019s not, then it\u2019s not a license, it\u2019s a property right. So, I think it\u2019s good that people are mindful now that there are things they have to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Many of the Carr FCC\u2019s most controversial actions have taken place outside of these open meetings. On 19 March, the FCC approved the local television giant Nexstar\u2019s $6.2bn merger with rival TEGNA \u2013 without a vote from the full commission, and in violation of rules guarding against any television company owning more than 39% of stations in the country. (The companies were granted waivers.)<\/p>\n The deal would create a behemoth owning 265 television stations in 44 states and the District of Columbia, and still faces legal action from opponents who charge it will destroy local news and raise prices for consumers.<\/p>\n The Republican senator Ted Cruz, who previously criticized Carr\u2019s conduct during the Kimmel affair, said publicly that the Nexstar-TEGNA merger should have received a full commission vote, rather than being approved by the commission\u2019s media bureau. It still could, Carr said on Thursday.<\/p>\n Despite the large number of investigations aimed at a wide variety of media companies he has initiated in the past 14 months, Carr largely has not taken enforcement actions, which would be challengeable in court.<\/p>\n \u201cAs best I can tell, he doesn\u2019t do anything by way of an appealable action,\u201d said Alfred C Sikes, who was appointed by former President George HW Bush to serve as FCC chairman from 1989 to 1993. \u201cSo, he creates fear, and in the world in which we live, things are pretty fragile.\u201d (Using a Trumpian insult, Carr has previously accused Sikes \u2013 and several of his fellow former FCC commissioners \u2013 of having \u201cTrump Derangement Syndrome\u201d.)<\/p>\n \u201cThe predisposition of somebody in a thin-margin business is to cut back, cut back, cut back, keep your head down, do the things that can arguably be profitable, and that\u2019s it,\u201d Sikes said. \u201cAnd so if all of a sudden you\u2019ve got a Federal Communications Commission that is creating a fearful environment in which you operate, then you\u2019re simply going to pull back. You\u2019re either not going to cover news or you\u2019re only going to cover bland information. And so that\u2019s my fear.\u201d<\/p>\n While past FCC chairmen have taken pains to keep some distance from the president who appointed them, Carr has shown no interest in doing so, visiting Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida on several occasions. In December, he was pictured eating dinner near the president. (Sikes quipped that he was \u201cnever invited\u201d to vacation with the president.)<\/p>\n Gomez, who declined comment when asked whether it was appropriate for an FCC chairman to visit a president\u2019s resort, said she continued to have \u201ca very open and honest relationship\u201d with Carr marked by \u201cfrank discussions about what the agency is doing\u201d. She said: \u201cWe keep our relationship cordial and we may disagree on the issues, but we remain respectful and collaborative where we can.\u201d (Carr is also gracious during FCC meetings, regularly praising Gomez for her contributions to initiatives.)<\/p>\n But Gomez has not held back in her denunciations of Carr\u2019s leadership. And she has repeatedly called on broadcasters not to be swayed or intimidated by his threatening messages.<\/p>\n \u201cUltimately, the era of the FCC as a paper tiger will come to an end,\u201d she said. \u201cBut what the public will remember is which company capitulated and which broadcaster complied in advance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" During a ceremony at the White House late last week honoring the US Naval Academy football team, Donald Trump gave a shoutout to the man he said was \u201cperhaps the most powerful man in this room\u201d: Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission chairman. \u201cYou are doing some job,\u201d Trump said. \u201cHe\u2019s trying to make the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[794,20776,15390,2431,4698,10246,1113,7178,81,71,3406],"class_list":{"0":"post-47563","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-administration","9":"tag-brendan","10":"tag-carr","11":"tag-chair","12":"tag-fcc","13":"tag-paper","14":"tag-powerful","15":"tag-tiger","16":"tag-trump","17":"tag-trumps","18":"tag-uniquely"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}