FCC chairman threatens TV broadcast licenses over news coverage

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr threatened broadcasters with cancellation of their licenses if they did not “correct course” on news coverage.

“Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions — also known as the fake news — have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr said in a social media post Saturday. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”

Carr posted his warning on top of a post from President Donald Trump complaining about coverage of the US-Israeli strikes on Iran. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has also criticized news outlets for war coverage that he said “makes the president look bad.”

It’s Carr’s latest threat against television broadcasters after Trump has expressed displeasure with coverage, or with a particular reporter or late-night talk-show host. Trump has suggested that networks should lose their broadcast license due to unfair coverage. Such licenses don’t apply to cable, streaming or print outlets.

The FCC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

Even before Trump began his second term, he urged the FCC to “impose the maximum fines and punishment” on CBS for alleged “unlawful and illegal behavior” when it edited a 60 Minutes interview with 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

In September, Carr suggested that local stations risked their broadcast licenses for airing ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! after the late-night host accused Trump supporters of using conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s murder to “score political points.”

The FCC doesn’t directly license the national networks themselves, and therefore can’t bring enforcement actions against them directly. Individual local stations — including those owned by the networks and independently owned affiliates — do hold FCC licenses and are legally responsible for complying with the agency’s rules.

Revoking licenses for content the administration doesn’t like would be an unprecedented expansion of the FCC’s powers and some attempts have been successfully challenged in court.

After Carr’s remarks on Kimmel, Nexstar Media Group Inc., the largest owner of local TV stations in the US, pulled the show from its 32 ABC stations. Sinclair Inc. also dropped the show from its ABC affiliates. Both companies restored the program to their stations in late September.

The FCC launched an equal-time investigation into ABC’s daytime talk show The View after it had Democratic US Senate candidate James Talarico as a guest in February when he was competing in the primary. CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert said his network said he couldn’t air an interview with Talarico out of concern that Carr would consider it a violation of federal fairness rules.

Colbert posted the interview on YouTube, where it got more than 9 million views.