The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was never intended to serve as a government fact-checker, but Commissioner Brendan Carr appears eager to wield its authority to police media outlets that don’t align with his views. His latest move? Targeting CBS over its editorial decisions in an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. Under the guise of enforcing the “public interest,” Carr is using the FCC’s power to challenge media mergers and pressure broadcasters—setting a dangerous precedent that undermines the First Amendment.
But Carr isn’t alone. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Andrew Ferguson has also suggested using government power to punish companies he deems politically problematic. Instead of upholding free markets and limited government, these officials are embracing regulatory overreach—an approach that future administrations will have no problem turning against conservatives.
Market Institute Senior Fellow Norm Singleton explores this troubling trend in his latest piece for Real Clear Markets. Read an excerpt below:
“Federal Communications Commission (FCC) new Chair Brendan Carr previously said that one of his main priorities will be to ensure broadcast companies are fulfilling their duty to “serve the public interest.” An example of Commissioner Carr “serving the public interest” is his November statement to Fox News regarding allegations that CBS’s 60 Minutes altered part of their interview with then-Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris to make her answers appear more concise and knowledgeable. CBS says the edits were done to make the interview fit within the 21-minute time limit, and in fact they played an unedited version of the Vice President’s responses earlier that day on Face the Nation. However, CBS refused to release a transcript of the unedited interview. Carr says he will use the “public interest” requirement to challenge the merger between Paramount, which owns CBS and Skydance.
It is doubtful when Congress gave the FCC the authority to ensure broadcasters would use their federal license to act in the “public interest” that they intended for the FCC to second guess a broadcaster’s editorial decisions regarding how to edit interviews and other pieces. Commissioner Carr will turn the FCC into a federal “fact checker” with power to sanction media outlets if the news programs offend the FCC Chair. This is a blatant violation of the First Amendment.
The very idea of a private business having to serve the public interest as defined by politicians, bureaucrats, and the courts is anathema to a limited government and free-market system. Some may say this intervention is justified because businesses use the broadcast spectrum given to them by the federal government. They may have a point, but it’s actually a better argument for privatizing the broadcast spectrum—not using government’s control of it as a way to get around the First Amendment.
This is not the only instance of Commissioner Carr using the FCC’s power against media he considers hostile to conservatives. Commissioner Carr has also targeted NewsGuard, a site that ranks the credibility and accuracy of various news sites. NewsGuard has been accused of being biased against conservatives. However, the service consistently gives good ratings to conservative and libertarian sites like the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, and the CATO Institute. Ironically, NewsGuard also gave a good rating to the Media Research Center—who wrote the study claiming that NewsGuard was biased against conservatives. The Media Research Center study formed the basis of Carr’s charges against the site that inspired Carr to attack NewsGuard. The fact is, as Reason Senior Editor Jacob Sullivan pointed out, NewsGuard is a private company. They have no ability to force anyone to use their ranking system. People choose to use NewsGuard because they trust their ratings.
It is Chair Carr who is apparently working to “undermine our Constitutional liberties” with his efforts to use his power to punish websites like NewsGuard and businesses like CBS because he does not agree with how they use their First Amendment rights. The Supreme Court upheld NewsGuard’s and other websites’ First Amendment rights in the case Moody vs. Net Choice, a case dealing with state laws regarding the ability of tech companies to engage in “content moderation.” The Court stated “the Constitution protects the expression of groups like NewsGuard, which simply provides opinions on the credibility of content and information sources that other services may choose to adopt or ignore at their discretion.”
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