Trump FCC Chair Brendan Carr Reinstates Dismissed Complaints Against ABC, CBS, And NBC Within 48 Hours Of Inauguration, Resolves Long-Standing Concern That Federal Telecommunications Regulator Was Treating Election Coverage As Protected Speech

The Filing

WASHINGTON. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, elevated to his expanded role 48 hours after President Trump's inauguration, marked his second full day on the job by reinstating three election-related broadcast complaints against ABC, CBS, and NBC that the previous commission had dismissed weeks earlier as without merit. The action, the agency confirmed, resolved a long-standing federal concern that the country's three largest commercial broadcast networks had been permitted to cover a presidential election without subsequent regulatory consequence.

Carr, the author of the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC, explained that the previous chairman's decision to dismiss the complaints had been based on the now-discredited theory that editorial judgments by independent news organizations were not a matter for federal review. Under the new framework, sources at the commission said, federal review of editorial judgment will be ongoing and unbounded.

The reinstated complaints concern, in order: ABC's moderation of the September 2024 presidential debate, in which moderators corrected on-air statements made by then-candidate Trump; CBS's editing of an October 2024 "60 Minutes" interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris; and NBC's decision to air an appearance by Harris on "Saturday Night Live" forty-eight hours before the polls opened. "These are exactly the kinds of editorial choices the public has a right to see federally relitigated for as long as it takes," Carr said in remarks at the commission's headquarters, declining to specify which provision of the Communications Act of 1934 he believed authorized the relitigation.

Within the week, the commission opened separate inquiries into the underwriting practices of National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, on the theory that on-air acknowledgments thanking the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's institutional donors may constitute prohibited commercial advertising. The Center for American Rights, the conservative nonprofit that filed the original complaints, said it was pleased that the agency was at last willing to entertain its theory that public radio underwriting credits represented a more pressing telecommunications hazard than the steady consolidation of commercial broadcast ownership the agency had declined to address. NPR and PBS responded that they had operated under the same underwriting rules continuously since the 1981 Public Broadcasting Amendments and would welcome the opportunity to explain this to the regulator at any length the regulator preferred.

Pending mergers before the commission, including Paramount's proposed sale to Skydance, were not formally connected to the new complaints. Sources at Paramount confirmed that the parent company of CBS had begun reviewing its outstanding Trump-related litigation with a fresh sense of urgency, and that "60 Minutes" had been informed by the legal department that its standing invitation to White House officials remained warmly extended.

At press time, the commission's Democratic minority issued a statement noting that the FCC has no statutory authority to police the editorial content of broadcast journalism. The statement was filed with the agency's secretary, who confirmed receipt and added that it would be considered carefully at such time as the agency's Democratic minority became its majority.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump personally, who installed a regulator empowered to investigate broadcasters whose coverage he found insufficiently flattering, and to do so without invoking him by name in the proceeding.
§Brendan Carr, elevated from commissioner to chairman as explicit reward for authoring the Project 2025 chapter laying out exactly this enforcement program.
§The Center for American Rights, the conservative nonprofit whose dismissed complaints the new commission revived within two days of taking power.
§Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation, whose telecommunications blueprint moved from think-tank document to active federal policy in under a week.
§Fox Corporation and Sinclair Broadcast Group, broadcasters whose election coverage prompted no complaints and whose licensing matters now proceed before a friendly chairman.
§Future merger applicants before the commission, newly informed that settling Trump-related litigation and softening coverage materially improves regulatory prospects, a lesson Paramount, ABC parent Disney, and Comcast would each act on in the months that followed.
§The Trump Organization, beneficiary of broadcasters across the industry now operating with a recalibrated understanding of the cost of unfavorable coverage of its principal.
§Republican commissioners on the FCC, who will hold a working majority on every contested matter through the remainder of the term.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment