CAR, CBS and Others Rumble in News Distortion Filings

The American Civil Liberties Union, Media Institute, Free Press and numerous others strongly disagreed. “The FCC simply cannot, and should not, set itself up to be an overseer of countless editorial decisions by news organizations,” the Media Institute said. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said last week that the agency won’t dismiss the news distortion proceeding (see 2503210060).

“As commenters across the ideological spectrum overwhelmingly agree,” CBS said, the transcript and unedited footage of the network's interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris "demonstrate that CBS engaged in commonplace editorial practices.” The FCC setting itself up as the “arbiter of acceptable journalism going forward” would be “an unconstitutional role and an impossible one for a federal agency.”

CAR charged that the groups opposing the complaint either called for government action against conservative media in the past or were silent when others did. “How many of these organizations filed against FCC meddling at Fox Television?” it asked. “Who was outraged when officials in Loudoun County, Virginia, filed a news distortion complaint in June 2024 against Sinclair affiliate WJLA?” CAR acknowledged that NAB, which opposes CAR’s complaint, also opposed the proceeding on Fox’s WTXF Philadelphia. The Loudoun County complaint against WJLA was never put out for comment but was condemned by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, then a commissioner. “The word you’re looking for is ‘crickets,’” CAR said in its filing Monday.

CAR also pushed back on arguments that the news distortion proceeding is politically targeted. But Carr’s reopening of the complaint against CBS after it was dismissed by the previous administration represents “selective enforcement” and “regulatory thuggery,” said a joint filing from journalism and media law professors Christopher Terry of the University of Minnesota and Israel Balderas of Elon University.

“Why does no one think that an outgoing chair directing staff to dismiss complaints on her last week in office is not political?” CAR asked. “'Selective enforcement’ is when Fox and Sinclair are constantly under regulatory pressure from Democrats at the FCC and in the Congress and from their outside allies, but then unchecked ‘press freedom’ is the sacrosanct principle when CBS allegedly transgresses the same lines when Republicans are in power.”

Nearly every other commenter argued that the CAR complaint fails to satisfy the FCC’s basic requirements for a finding of news distortion because it presents no extrinsic evidence that CBS or its station WCBS New York deliberately intended to mislead viewers. FCC precedent requires “clear evidence of deliberate falsification at the behest of station management, such as directives, incentives or proof of intentional deception,” Terry and Balderas said. The ACLU said that “given this standard, it is clear that CAR’s petition is baseless, and the FCC should not be investigating it.” The “woeful deficiencies of the CAR Complaint alone should be reason enough for the FCC to dismiss this matter,” said the Media Institute.

CAR disagreed: The FCC “should be wary of the multiple comments relying on FCC decisions pre-1998 to define the burden of proof for news distortion complaints,” it said. “The standard is ‘smoke.’ Even ‘lots of smoke.’ But the standard at the complaint stage is not (nor could it be) complete proof of actual fire.”

The FCC should do away with the news distortion rules altogether, said Jeffrey Westling, director-technology and innovation policy at the American Action Forum. “The mere existence of the news distortion rule allows the FCC to exert undue influence over a broadcaster’s editorial judgments,” he said. “The outcome of news distortion complaints should not depend on the party in power.”

The Media Institute also called for the agency to dismiss the CAR complaint in a manner that doesn’t leave the door open to “future complaints alleging news distortion based on the Commission’s inherently flawed and admittedly narrow news distortion policy.” CAR compared the FCC’s authority to regulate news distortion to its authority to regulate broadcast indecency and the government’s regulation of misleading commercial speech. That framework “justifies” the news distortion rules, CAR said.

The FCC should use the Skydance/Paramount deal to require CBS' 60 Minutes to “promptly release complete transcripts of all interviews with sitting public officials and candidates,” CAR said. The group has previously suggested other merger conditions, including requiring CBS to add viewpoint diversity to its corporate officers, relocate its editorial operations out of New York and Los Angeles, diversify its hiring pipelines to include conservatives and people from rural communities, and establish an ombudsman. The FCC “should act to protect the public interest” and “the accuracy of the news and viewpoint diversity,” CAR said.

Even if the FCC doesn’t take action against CBS, the existence of the proceeding has damaged journalism and free speech, said several commenters, including the ACLU. “The mere act of investigating a baseless claim will chill reporting, and deny the people of the United States their right to gather information from a variety of sources,” the ACLU said. The news distortion complaint and other FCC investigations into PBS, NPR, Comcast and Audacy-owned KCBS San Francisco “send a message: say what we want you to say, or you will have to spend your resources defending yourself instead of reporting.” Free Press agreed: The “very material burden this spectacle imposes on journalists cannot be overstated.”