Taxpayers Protection Alliance Condemns FCC Weaponization
The FCC’s merger approval powers have become a weapon against the Trump administration’s political foes, said the Taxpayers Protection Alliance in a blog post Thursday. “This FCC’s antipathy for liberal media outlets, and their parent companies, stems from political disagreements,”…
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said TPA. “News outlets hostile to a sitting president should not be subjected to harsher regulatory scrutiny than the president’s friends.” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has characterized the agency’s pressure on broadcast networks as merely enforcement of the public interest standard. “According to Carr, the adherence to the public interest consists of adherence to his particular notion of unbiased journalism,” TPA said. “Whether the First Amendment allows for such an interpretation is -- at the least -- quite dubious.” It “seems clear that the public interest is at violent odds with any extension of state control over a free media,” TPA said. Conservative leaders such as former President Ronald Reagan -- who oversaw the elimination of the fairness doctrine -- “once understood the First Amendment objections to the marriage of un-biasing the media and the public interest,” TPA said. “Conservatives would do well to recover their lost understanding.”