FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez condemned the FCC investigations of broadcast networks as "weaponization" of the FCC's authority, while the Center for American Rights called for the agency to investigate diversity initiatives at CBS.
The full 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should overturn its three-judge panel’s decision against the FCC’s 2024 net neutrality order, said an en banc appeal that Public Knowledge, Free Press, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, and the Open Technology Institute jointly filed Tuesday. The 6th Circuit should grant en banc review because the January decision creates a circuit split with the 9th Circuit and the D.C. Circuit on whether broadband internet access service (BIAS) falls under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, the appeal said. The 6th Circuit panel “shoehorned its policy preferences into the law, in a slapdash and inconsistent opinion that, if left unchallenged, will eliminate the ability of future regulators to promote universal, affordable competitive broadband access,” Public Knowledge Legal Director John Bergmayer said in a statement.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s announcement that the FCC will begin investigating regulatees with diversity, equality and inclusion programs appears to be among the first actions a federal agency has taken to enforce President Donald Trump’s DEI executive order, though the FCC’s authority in this area is unclear, attorneys and academics told us. In his letter Tuesday to Comcast, Carr said the agency plans “broader efforts to root out invidious forms of DEI discrimination across all of the sectors the FCC regulates.”
The FCC is investigating Audacy’s KCBS San Francisco over the station’s broadcasting of locations and identifying details of vehicles involved in an undercover Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in January, according to a Fox News report that quotes FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.
The FCC opened a docket on the news distortion complaint against CBS, and both the FCC and CBS have released the unedited transcript of the 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Editing of the interview is also the subject of a suit that President Donald Trump brought against the network.
The FCC abruptly declined to defend the inclusion of a nonbinary gender category in its broadcaster workplace diversity data collection shortly before the start of oral argument at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday. The eleventh-hour shift could lead to the court declining to rule on the case, attorneys told us.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr expected CBS to give in to the agency’s request for an unedited transcript of a 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris by the end of day Monday, he said in a Monday morning Fox interview. “It's due today, and I expect CBS to provide it by the end of the day, to see what in fact was said as part of our own news distortion investigation,” Carr said.
Five days before a scheduled oral argument on the FCC’s Form 395-B collection of diversity data from broadcasters, DOJ told the court Thursday that it no longer supports aspects of the equal employment opportunity (EEO) rule, citing the recent White House executive orders on diversity and gender terminology in a letter filed with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in docket 24-60219.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has asked the Enforcement and Media bureaus to investigate PBS and NPR member stations over possible underwriting violations, and he doesn’t think they should receive taxpayer funds, according to identical letters sent to the CEOs of those stations Wednesday. Attorneys told us the FCC hasn’t historically been very active in policing underwriting, and the agency’s Democrats said that the letters appeared to be an attempt to intimidate public broadcasters.
A White House executive order on diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) programs could lead to telecom companies abandoning such efforts, causing a rollback of progress on diversity, said industry executives and public interest attorneys during a FCBA panel discussion Tuesday. There is “fear and chaos” in “lots of corridors and hallways of corporate America” over the DEI executive order and anticipation of future White House action in that vein, said Clint Odom, T-Mobile vice president-strategic alliances and external affairs and a former FCC aide. “The world seems to be lining up between the companies that are doing DEI and the companies that are retreating from it.”