\n<\/p>\n
A group of prominent Senate Democrats sent a letter on Thursday to Brendan Carr, the Trump-aligned Federal Communications Commission chair, asking him to rescind the US media regulator\u2019s order last week requiring ABC to apply early to renew its television licenses.<\/p>\n
The eight ABC-owned station licenses were not originally up for renewal until 2028 at the earliest and 2031 at the latest; now, the renewal requests must be filed by the end of May.<\/p>\n
Although Carr told reporters that the early license renewal request stemmed from an ongoing investigation into the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts of ABC\u2019s parent company, Disney, the announcement came just a day after the president and his wife called on the network to fire Jimmy Kimmel, the late-night comedian, for a poorly timed joke. The letter called the early renewal demand an \u201cextraordinary abuse of power\u201d and an \u201cunconstitutional abuse of the Commission\u2019s powers\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe campaign against Disney and its editorial decision-making, culminating in last week\u2019s early-renewal order, is an egregious abuse of power and a clear violation of the First Amendment,\u201d lawmakers state in the letter led by Senators Edward J Markey, Chuck Schumer, Maria Cantwell and Ben Ray Luj\u00e1n. Eight other senators also signed the letter.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough the FCC has the authority to ensure broadcasters operate in the public interest, it cannot serve as President Trump\u2019s roving censor, threatening to revoke licenses against broadcasters whose editorial content \u2013 including a comedian\u2019s jokes \u2013 displeases the President.\u201d<\/p>\n
The senators accused Carr of using the FCC\u2019s licensing authority as \u201ca cudgel against broadcasters whose editorial choices displease the President\u201d.<\/p>\n
The FCC has two other open investigations into ABC, including one based on a 2024 complaint about the network\u2019s moderation of a presidential debate and a more recent inquiry into whether The View, the ABC show, violated equal time rules when it hosted James Talarico, a Senate candidate.<\/p>\n
The letter includes a series of questions to Carr, with a request that they be answered by 21 May.<\/p>\n
The senators asked Carr to \u201cdescribe the timing and process\u201d used by the FCC to determine that ABC should be forced to apply early for license renewal, and whether FCC lawyers reviewed the order.<\/p>\n
The letter also asks Carr whether he or his staff communicated with the White House in the days before the order was issued. At an FCC meeting last week, Carr denied that there was any external pressure. \u201cThis was a decision that we made inside this building based on where we were in the enforcement matter,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was no pressure from the outside. There was no suggestion from the outside. There was no call for agency action from the outside.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition, the senators asked whether the FCC considered any less aggressive steps before issuing the order last week, considering the nearly unprecedented nature of the demand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A group of prominent Senate Democrats sent a letter on Thursday to Brendan Carr, the Trump-aligned Federal Communications Commission chair, asking him to rescind the US media regulator\u2019s order last week requiring ABC to apply early to renew its television licenses. The eight ABC-owned station licenses were not originally up for renewal until 2028 at<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[2055,20776,303,15390,581,205,4316,4473,1314,1168],"class_list":{"0":"post-49189","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-abc","9":"tag-brendan","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-carr","12":"tag-democrats","13":"tag-media","14":"tag-press","15":"tag-regulator","16":"tag-senate","17":"tag-top"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49189","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=49189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/49190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}