Rosenworcel Set Precedent for Broadcast Investigations, Carr Says
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Thursday his actions against broadcast networks are based on precedents set by former FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, and his views on free speech and the role of the FCC have been consistent throughout his time there.
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In an onstage interview at a Semafor news summit, Carr said conservative-leaning TV company Sinclair Broadcast was unable to get a single station license renewed for the last four years, out of about 200 eligible, under the previous FCC. He also pointed to the previous FCC’s proceeding on a petition against the license of Fox-owned WTXF Philadelphia. A source familiar with the matter said that only one Sinclair station, a low-power, was granted license renewal under the Rosenworcel FCC, while many others have remained pending for years. “I’m having to apply the case law that the Democrats have set,” Carr said. “What we're doing right now is following the law that the FCC has developed over the last four years.” Rosenworcel didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on Carr's remarks. Carr said the furor over his recent letters to networks, compared with the media’s silence on the previous FCC’s treatment of Fox and Sinclair, is “the definition of media bias.” The FCC “has this history of looking at broadcasters and taking these actions, but only in the last couple of weeks have people said ‘that’s unprecedented.’ Well, it's not unprecedented.”
Asked about his past statements that the FCC should stay out of newsrooms, Carr conceded that views can change but stopped short of saying that his own had shifted. “Everything that I've been doing is consistent over the course of my conduct, over years,” he said. “I've seen these stories before. They say, 'Well, he used to be very libertarian, and now he's not,' but I'm not really sure what the timeline is.” Carr said he is not a fundamentalist libertarian opposed to all government action, and he looks for concentrations of power combined with harmful conduct and always has. “We look at Silicon Valley and social media -- lots of power, and I think they've used it in a discriminatory way.”
Under Carr's FCC, “everyone will get a fair shake,” he said. “If Starlink or [CEO Elon] Musk is pushing an issue and he's right 100% of time at the FCC, we're gonna side with them 100%. If he's pushing an issue and he's wrong every single time, he's gonna lose every single time at the FCC,” Carr said. He added that his communications with the White House follow normal protocols and said he wasn’t familiar with a recent Truth Social post from President Donald Trump calling for MSNBC to pay for supporting Democrats (see 2502240034).