CAR Files Complaint Against Deportee Coverage by CBS, ABC and NBC
The Center for American Rights (CAR) has filed a news distortion complaint at the FCC against CBS, NBC and ABC over their coverage of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador. CAR is the same entity behind the ongoing news distortion proceeding against CBS over a 60 Minutes interview. The complaint comes less than a week after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr posted a warning to NBC parent Comcast about its coverage of Garcia. “Comcast knows that federal law requires its licensed operations to serve the public interest. News distortion doesn’t cut it,” Carr wrote Wednesday.
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The networks “have all done a grave disservice to the basic facts of the controversy by consistently referring to [Garcia] as a ‘Maryland father’ and in some instances even presenting false information, like calling him a ‘legal resident,’” CAR said in its complaint. “The actual facts -- that he is an illegal alien and that an immigration judge has found he is a member of a violent gang -- are not reported or are treated as unconfirmed rumors.”
CBS, ABC, NBC and NAB didn’t immediately comment.
“The American people no longer extend an assumption of ‘reasonable good faith’ to broadcast journalism, and this reality should prompt the Commission to question whether it should do so either,” CAR said in the complaint, which echoes and cites Carr’s X post. That post appeared to have been prompted by comments from White House Communications Director Steven Cheung condemning CNN and MSNBC’s coverage.
In the complaint, CAR said NBC, CBS and ABC didn’t sufficiently convey Garcia’s alleged connections with MS-13 and emphasized that he was a “Maryland dad” when he wasn’t a legal resident. The complaint called out reporting that it said was factually wrong but also took issue with the language the networks used in their reports. Garcia “is not a legal resident, but an illegal alien. The Trump administration does not ‘claim’ he is a member of MS-13 -- a federal immigration judge has found that he was a member of MS-13 based on evidence.” The reporting on Garcia is “editorializing masked as news reporting,” CAR said. “NBC, ABC, and CBS have not acted with journalistic integrity.”
The complaint didn't appear to be aimed at a specific station and didn't point to external evidence of deliberate distortion. Broadcast attorneys have told us both are required for valid news distortion complaints. CAR labeled its own filing an “informal consumer complaint” but called it a “formal complaint” in a press release.
“This is just another effort by a partisan group asking the FCC to become the nation's speech police,” said the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s Robert Corn-Revere, formerly chief counsel to FCC Commissioner James Quello. “The Communications Act does not authorize this type of review of news judgment, and the First Amendment forecloses any bid by the FCC to become the Ministry of Truth.”
“This wasn’t sloppy reporting -- it was deliberate distortion,” CAR President Daniel Suhr said in a release. “NBC, ABC, and CBS tried to gaslight the American people with a manufactured sob story. Inaccurate news reporting is not journalism, and it’s not in the public interest. It’s also not protected by the First Amendment, as the Supreme Court has said many times.”
CAR also said the FCC should cease assuming broadcasters are making journalism choices in good faith and step up news distortion enforcement. “Exercising greater vigilance when applying the news distortion standard, given the lack of a good-faith presumption, does not violate the First Amendment,” it said. “The public’s right to accurate news trumps the broadcasters’ right to slant the news in their preferred ideological direction.”