Trump's License Call: A New Angle on a Familiar Tune

The early morning social media rage post is not a new thing for Donald Trump. This time, it's a familiar tune, as he again called for CBS to lose its broadcast license. The reason? A 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. Trump has claimed that CBS was deceptive in how they edited the interview. CBS News has a different story. They say the edits were simply for time purposes, splitting the answer across different shows. The full, unedited transcript supports this, but Trump is not convinced. Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against CBS under Texas’ Deceptive Practices Act. Legal experts are not sure if the lawsuit has any merit. CBS has been working to settle the matter, especially as they seek regulatory approval for their acquisition by Skydance. Trump's legal team has a court deadline on Friday to respond to CBS’ motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The show defended their editing process, saying journalists regularly edit interviews for time, space, or clarity. They also said that they always work within the constraints of broadcast television. Trump has a history of calling for CBS to lose its license, often during his first term. But this time, things are different. This time, the FCC chair, Brendan Carr, revived a conservative group’s complaint. Carr has opened up a docket on the issue, adding further delay to any resolution. The complaint was filed against the network’s flagship affiliate, WCBS-TV in New York. But broadcast licenses are not issued to networks, but to individual stations. Trump’s history of lawsuits against media outlets is long, with many of them dismissed. He often rages at news journalists as the “enemy of the people” for reporting on content he doesn’t like. Trump has a long history of filing lawsuits against media outlets, with many dismissed. He often rages at news journalists as the “enemy of the people” for reporting on content he doesn’t like. But in his first term, his FCC chair, Ajit Pai, made clear that the agency “under the law does not have the authority to revoke the license of a broadcast station based on the content of a particular newscast. ” Carr, though, has contended that the complaint needed to be investigated under the FCC’s “news distortion” policy. But the agency acknowledges that its authority is narrow, and that it is “prohibited by law from engaging in censorship or infringing on First Amendment rights of the press. ”

On Fox & Friends this morning, Carr defended his decision to pursue the inquiry. He said that there’s a lot of people in this country right now on the radical left that are upset about this investigation into CBS and the work that I’m doing on broadcasters. He also said that he is here to apply the law evenly, and that this is a rare situation where we have extrinsic evidence that CBS had played one answer or one set of words and then swapped in another set. He also said that CBS’ conduct through this, frankly, has been concerning. But Robert Corn-Revere, former chief counsel at the FCC, posted an open letter to Carr in the Columbia Journalism Review. He wrote that courts have frowned on government officials who “use coercive threats to restrict speech. ” Corn-Revere wrote, “The practice of making threats (veiled or otherwise), demanding answers or documents from licensees, or otherwise exerting informal pressure has been sufficiently common that the courts have given it a name: regulation by raised eyebrow. It is also generally called ‘jawboning. ’ Some officials believe they can avoid judicial scrutiny if they only act informally, confining their actions to bullying through unofficial actions. But they are wrong. ” He also noted that Carr had recently revived complaints against not just CBS but NBC and ABC, but did not give new life to one against Fox. Rosenworcel had dismissed all four before her departure. Corn-Revere wrote that “the more favorable treatment of Fox, compared with CBS, NBC, and ABC, could lead some cynics to wonder whether the decision might have something to do with the perceived political alignments of the particular broadcasters. Any partisan application of the law would make the First Amendment problem even worse, as you well know. ” Clay Calvert, senior fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, also questioned Carr’s embrace of the broadcast distortion rule. Calvert wrote, “Ultimately, Trump should remember that after he leaves office –– either immediately or somewhere down the road –– a Democrat surely will occupy the White House and control a three-person majority on the FCC. The same power Trump now seeks to corral broadcast journalism then will be deployed against Republican-tilting news organizations. ”

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