• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

The Trump Administration rants about ABC News And NBC, Says They Should Lose FCC Licenses

It's fine to have that opinion, and nobody is saying you can't have that opinion. The difference here is taking that opinion and then using a position as an official in the government to target other people for what they said and demanding they get fired. I think Carr has realized he can't in fact do what the president wants him to do, but he can make business more difficult for Kimmel's employer. In its own way, that is an invidious form of discrimination. Because it's only being used on the companies the president has identified.
I agree with this perspective. The position of the FCC is more regulatory and less policy making. Carr’s carrying a Presidential agenda which I do not find appropriate.

While I am concerned that the vast majority of reporters in the news media are liberal, this is not the way to discuss the issue.
 
Aw, come on! One thing is joking about one's own mortality and another is predicting the death of someone else
We are all going to die. It isn’t going out on a limb to statistically suggest a morbidly obese, older man with atrocious dietary habits might be closer to that stage of the circle of life than his considerably younger “wife.” Again, your issue is not with the subject matter, as jokes about older men shuffling off this mortal coil and their younger companions have abounded for years.
 
Ted knows how to take a joke regarding the death of a President, like when Trump said his father killed JFK.
 
I have received several dozen direct emails objecting to the one-sided position of "it's just a joke" and who find such comments to be the opposite of humor... and even an encouragement for real actions.
Several dozen like-minded people who can’t take a joke does not justify the government using its power to seek retribution. And perhaps maybe one of those dozens of people could point to anywhere someone encouraged an actual action. Hint: they didn’t.
As someone who went to school with, worked with and even dated survivors and who knew real Third Reich nazi's, I find the use of many terms in broadcast dialogs to be both inaccurate and very harmful.
Yes, because the historically accurate analogies are more offensive than the actual actions. Great, be offended. Boycott. You are not bestowed with some extra level of judgement about what is or isn’t accurate.
 
I agree with this perspective. The position of the FCC is more regulatory and less policy making. Carr’s carrying a Presidential agenda which I do not find appropriate.

The president disavowed the agenda while he was running. But he signed an EO requiring government agencies follow this agenda. Bait & switch.

What makes it invidious is it's not being applied evenly to all broadcasters. Just the ones the president specifies. In this case: ABC.
 
The part about this however is that the administration has made a crime out of DEI, which is an extension of Equal Opportunity rules. For example, if you apply for a job at an ABC TV station, there is this disclaimer at the bottom of the job listing:



On the surface that looks fine. But this administration doesn't like the last two categories, even though they are part of the law.


He says the station can't discriminate on the basis of race or gender. What he means by the is the station can't hire blacks or gays. But that's not what the law says. This is a case where the administration is pushing its own agenda without actually having a legal basis. ABC doesn't have a director of DEI and they don't use DEI in hiring. They're simply following EOE rules. But Carr wants to make a big deal out of nothing, and he's managed to do that here.

DEI itself isn't illegal, and the government admits that. However, following the president's EO, government agencies, including the FCC and even EEOC have policies about how DEI can be done:


This gets into that area of interpreting vague rules by agencies. This is about using civil rights laws to benefit white people. So far none of these agency campaigns against DEI have been challenged in the courts. Perhaps this time it will. We know under the Chevron decision, they will lose in court.
Uniformity, Inequity and Exclusion
 
The president disavowed the agenda while he was running. But he signed an EO requiring government agencies follow this agenda. Bait & switch.

What makes it invidious is it's not being applied evenly to all broadcasters. Just the ones the president specifies. In this case: ABC.

It's not even being applied evenly to the broadcasters he doesn't like. He sued CBS for editing the 60 Minutes interview of Kamala Harris, but when they edited out some of his nutty rants and aired a pared down version of his own interview with Norah O'Donnell? No lawsuit. And while they're on cable and not broadcast, he was swinging back and forth between being angry with Fox News and being pleased depending on which way the wind (and their coverage) happened to be blowing on any given day. This is hardly anything new - Trump loves someone one minute, then hates them with a passion when they "turn" on him, but trying to figure out who's drawn his ire and attempting to punish them to make him happy is hardly a strategy for running a federal agency tasked with making sure the public airwaves are serving their purpose.

Carr appears to conflate the "public interest" with "whatever Trump wants on any given day."
 
And while they're on cable and not broadcast, he was swinging back and forth between being angry with Fox News and being pleased depending on which way the wind (and their coverage) happened to be blowing on any given day. This is hardly anything new - Trump loves someone one minute, then hates them with a passion when they "turn" on him, but trying to figure out who's drawn his ire and attempting to punish them to make him happy is hardly a strategy for running a federal agency tasked with making sure the public airwaves are serving their purpose.
I know this isn't really broadcasting related, but this comment about Trump loving and then hating people reminded me of the MTG (Marjorie Taylor Greene) kerfuffle that happened toward the end of last year. Up to that point, she was the hard right "firebrand", and as such, she said and did some very controversial things that really pleased Trump.

However, when she decided that the cuts to Medicare passed late last year were a step too far, Trump and his cult of crazed, hard core MAGA devotees turned their ire against her. So suddenly, for better or worse, she was getting a big ugly does of her own medicine, and to her credit, it seemed to somehow break her away from the influence of Trump's "reality distortion field" and she actually began to think and act like a reasonable, normal, deeply apologetic person.

I thought that she'd eventually settle back into her old ways, but to my amazement, not only is she actually sounding more and more like a conservative Democrat, she's making regular appearances on CNN and actually saying many things that the Democrats have been saying for years, which was an unthinkable occurrence before her transformation.

c
 
More from Chairman Carr:


“We’ve been very clear that we’re holding broadcasters accountable to their obligations,” Carr said Thursday. “It’s gone all the way to the Supreme Court, and they’ve said that holding broadcasters to their public interest obligations isn’t censorship and it isn’t a violation of their First Amendment.”

He appears to be referring to the Fox fleeting expletive case from 2009. That went to the supreme court. It didn't really address the first amendment issue. They referred it back to the lower courts. The Red Lion case dealt with public interest and first amendment, but the decision was based on the scarcity of media concept. The FCC itself is now disputing that concept in its statements about loosening ownership rules.

But once again, what does he mean by "public interest obligations." In that same conversation, Carr said the situation with ABC isn't about Kimmel but DEI. That hasn't really been addressed by the courts either.
 
Last edited:
More from Chairman Carr:




He appears to be referring to the Fox fleeting expletive case from 2009. That went to the supreme court. It didn't really address the first amendment issue. They referred it back to the lower courts. The Red Lion case dealt with public interest and first amendment, but the decision was based on the scarcity of media concept. The FCC itself is now disputing that concept in its statements about loosening ownership rules.

But once again, what does he mean by "public interest obligations." In that same conversation, Carr said the situation with ABC isn't about Kimmel but DEI. That hasn't really been addressed by the courts either.
True and whenever Chairman Carr said "Public Interest Obligations" in the past month it meant to control the press corp/press pool in the Pentagon and White House because Pete Hegseth and Trump said its for "National Security Reasons" about Iran. It contained some missing parts such as how are publications like Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, USA Today, AP and Reuters fall under FCC requirements plus due process and 1st amendment too were included here.
 
But once again, what does he mean by "public interest obligations."
Whatever he wants it to mean in a given context to justify the end goal.
In that same conversation, Carr said the situation with ABC isn't about Kimmel but DEI. That hasn't really been addressed by the courts either.
They have enough of a sense of where SCOTUS is falling on broader diversity issues. It’s beyond unlikely a court that just destroyed the landmark Voting Rights Act is going to stop an action predicated, however falsely, on DEI.
 
True and whenever Chairman Carr said "Public Interest Obligations" in the past month it meant to control the press corp/press pool in the Pentagon and White House because Pete Hegseth and Trump said its for "National Security Reasons" about Iran. It contained some missing parts such as how are publications like Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, USA Today, AP and Reuters fall under FCC requirements plus due process and 1st amendment too were included here.
that doesn't make sence as those are newspapers, not in broadcasting.
 
that doesn't make sense as those are newspapers, not in broadcasting.
True too. The FCC does not regulate newspapers or wire services. But it was about Chairman Carr wanting to control the press pool to meet whatever demands Hegseth and Trump issued at the White House and Pentagon press corps.


 
But it was about Chairman Carr wanting to control the press pool to meet whatever demands Hegseth and Trump issued at the White House and Pentagon press corps.

The FCC doesn't control the press pool at the white house or pentagon. Most of the press at those places are either print, network, or social media, none of which are regulated by the FCC, The press pools in those locations are controlled by the communications offices of those offices.
 
The FCC doesn't control the press pool at the white house or pentagon. Most of the press at those places are either print, network, or social media, none of which are regulated by the FCC, The press pools in those locations are controlled by the communications offices of those offices.
True I agree with that too. Its just the Chairman has a history of inserting himself in issues he had no business in all because he had to do whatever the White House wanted him to do.
 


Back
Top Bottom