The FCC Won’t Let Them Be

Written By Leeja Miller

Sources:

Transcript:

Hi it’s Wednesday, April 30th, you’re tuned into Why, America? I’m Leeja Miller, let’s get started. CBS’s 60 Minutes has been embroiled in an ongoing lawsuit brought against it by Donald Trump in retaliation for an interview it aired with candidate Kamala Harris, alleging the news program deceptively edited the Harris segment and asking for $20 BILLION dollars in damages. In February, the FCC led by chairman Brendan Carr, who looks like if Trump advisor Stephen Miller and director of the OMB Russel Vought had a baby like why do all these men look like this, Brendan Carr chairman of the FCC re-opened an investigation into CBS related to a news-distortion complaint that had been closed under the Biden administration. Meanwhile, CBS’s parent company, Paramount, because if you just go up the chain a bit there are approximately 6 companies that control ALL OF IT, Paramount is trying to merge with Skydance Media. But because it’s clearly monopolistic behavior, they have to get governmental approval for the merger. And so Paramount, through its board of directors that is set to make a FUCK TON of money if the merger goes through, is trying everything it can to appease Trump because they know the only way to get anything with this government is to kiss the king’s ring. Because of this and the increased scrutiny of CBS news and especially 60 Minutes which is actively fighting a court battle against said tiny lil king, Paramount is pushing for greater oversight into the types of news segments that the regime may deem to be “DEI” inspired. Plus anything critical of Trump or related to the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. In fact Stephen Miller Russel Vought lovechild Brendan Carr chair of the FCC has explicitly threatened to block the merger over what he called “illegal DEI efforts.” Because of course they’re not concerned with monopolistic tendencies or enforcing their regulations that literally bar monopolies, they’re concerned with imposing their fucked up world view on the pesky liberal elite mainstream media that keeps doing things like fact checking them, so annoying.

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In a letter to employees last week, 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens suddenly resigned, saying quote “Over the past months, it has also become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it. To make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes, right for the audience.” He cited to editorial differences with Paramount and said “it’s clear the company is done with me.” And then, in the final minute of the 60 Minutes program on Sunday evening, top correspondent Scott Pelley used the time to call out Paramount by name and lament the resignation of Bill Ownens. [insert clip.] In a show of the journalistic integrity 60 minutes has exhibited since it first came on air in 1968, nearly 60 years ago, Scott Pelley didn’t speak in hyperbole or clickbaity terms. Paramount wants a merger. Trump must approve it. Paramount is now supervising us in ways that have hurt our ability to conduct honest journalism. Periodt.

And this isn’t just happening at CBS and 60 Minutes, the Trump regime’s attempt to control the news covers all branches of the media ecosystem at this point, mostly perpetrated through Brendan Carr, whose FCC has sent notices to NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR, and Comcast, which received a letter from Carr stating that the FCC was going to investigate Comcast, parent company to NBC Universal, for “promoting invidious forms of discrimination in violation of FCC regulations and civil rights laws” through, of course, DEI initiatives. Carr further asked that Comcast supply the FCC with “an accounting of Comcast’s and NBCUniversal’s DEI initiatives, preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities.” CBS has also been ordered by the FCC to hand over proprietary materials, which it did back in February, after which the FCC published the material online, including the entire transcript of the 60 minutes interview with Kamala Harris which showed that the editing of the segment, which couldn’t have aired in its entirety because of time constraints, did not misrepresent anything. In addition to sending threatening letters, Carr has also opened complaints against ABC for its moderation of the September 10th presidential debate, because again the fact checking violates their rights to spew disinformation, as well as a complaint against NBC for having Kamala Harris on as a guest on SNL three days before the election. It has been pointed out that he did not open investigations into Fox, showing obvious bias but also like of course he didn’t, let’s not pretend anyone is even trying to make it seem like there is fair and even governance happening at any level of the federal government at this point.

But this is important to note given the fact that the FCC is meant to be seen as an impartial regulator, not subject to the whims of any one administration. The FCC is also not supposed to meddle in the editorial decisions of media companies because of the pesky little thing called the First Amendment which bars the government from trying to control or punish speech. And considering the fact that we think corporations should have more rights and say than humans do in our government, this first amendment right also includes the right of these media companies to have editorial independence. The lack of editorial independence, and increased oversight and coercion of the state, is an important element for any authoritarian government. Which is why so much stock has been placed throughout the FCC’s history on ensuring that the commission at least upholds an appearance of impartiality. The FCC was created through the Communications Act of 1934 and is composed of a board of five people and at least one member of the board is required to be from a different political party than the president, another measure meant to safeguard the appearance of impartiality of the agency. That being said, Brendan Carr is not the first FCC chair to wield the agency for political ends.

During the administration of, say it with me, Ronald Fucking Reagan, the traditional regulatory aims of the FCC were flipped on their head when Reagan began wielding it to DE-regulate the media, including by revoking the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. Under the rule, the FCC required broadcasters to cover issues in a fair, non-partisan way, and to give equal airtime for public office seekers. The Fairness Doctrine had long been opposed by conservatives who argued that it favored the liberal media elite and infringed on first amendment rights of broadcasters. The Supreme Court regularly upheld the fairness doctrine saying, in 1969, that free speech was “the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters” and that “it is the purpose of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited market-place of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of that market, whether it be by the Government itself or a private licensee.” The Fairness Doctrine was created at a time when there were only a handful of available airwaves and so the scarcity required a level of control to ensure the public interest. By the 80s, Reagan and the FCC argued that cable TV meant that there was a greater availability of all types of shows and reporting and, therefore, the “free market” and self-regulation should determine what airs, not the government.

And then under Clinton, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 dramatically reduced FCC rules meant to stem corporate monopolies, opening the flood gates of media conglomeration. Before it was signed, about 50 companies controlled 90 percent of the media, now only 5 or six control that same percent of the market. The telecommunications act of 1996 also included Section 230, which is notorious for removing any and all responsibility from the shoulders of websites for the content which gets posted on them, meaning the things that Zuckerberg or Musk allow to proliferate on their websites, no matter how vile or cruel or against the public interest, will never implicate the Zuck or Elon for wrongdoing.

I delve into this history in part because we were chatting about it last night in my monthly Patreon video discussion call, patreon dot com slash leeja miller, but also because it’s important to understand that context in order to understand what’s happening at the FCC today. Despite the original intent of the creation of the FCC back in the 30s, which as Current Affairs recently described, “positioned broadcasters as public trustees in charge of cultivating an informed citizenry and safeguarding the public interest” the FCC has undergone radical changes throughout the years, largely due to the neoliberal free market ideologues on both the right and the left, that have given the FCC the power to DEregulate the media. But there is an inherent contradiction in how the right has wielded the power of the FCC. It is both an arm for deregulation, for allowing the “free market” to determine which media succeeds for fails, but also for curbing free speech where especially conservative forces dislike it. Major fights in the 80s and 90s against the broadcasting of “obscene” speech were spurred on by concerned conservative parents who were worried about their kids getting exposed to devil music and profanity. And today, Trump is wielding the power of the FCC to impose “anti-DEI” initiatives and punish any media company for stepping out of line. And this shitstorm of media conglomeration has meant that ALL of the news we consume is being run by private billionaires with their own political aims. The view in the 1930s that the press is meant to serve a public good, a view that itself stemmed from a long history of yellow journalism and other nefarious media meddling that proved to be contrary to the public good, has been completely abandoned in the name of greed and major corporate wealth.

And so, when Paramount decides to try to capitulate to the Trump administration in order to allow for their major merger to go through so a few shareholders can make a windfall, that is frankly the very obvious outcome of decades of deregulation that turned news media away from the public interest and towards corporate profits. Which is why the original creation of the FCC, the attempt to make the FCC appear as neutral as possible, the use of government regulation to protect against the rampage of unfettered capitalism, was so important. An informed citizenry is the key to a highly functioning democracy. Echo chambers do not allow for robust spreading of information, especially when those echo chambers are not held to any sort of standard when it comes to truth or recognition of biases or fairness in reporting. It is the government’s role to ensure the functioning of democracy, and so regulating the news media is a part of that, at least where corporate interests are concerned. Because it is simple pure human nature that we will be distracted by the shiniest most radical headline we can find. We will be drawn towards stories that reinforce our biases, and with echo chambers we never have to encounter information that doesn’t reinforce our biases. And the continued conglomeration and distrust in our news media means we have completely lost any source of actual truth to turn to. Which gives people an opportunity to “pick” the truth they believe in. Because we’ve been deprived of any news media not influenced by billionaires or the need to get clicks and eyeballs for ad revenue over everything else. And now here we are.

And so when a billionaire President who surrounds himself with other billionaires and ideologues and wields the powers of agencies meant to be neutral arbiters of the public good to enforce his version of the “truth”, he’s doing so on the back of decades of erosion of trust in the media and far right reinforcement of that distrust. Which in the end actually continues the recent history of the FCC as a tool wielded by the right when it suits them–allow further corporate conglomeration but then wield the FCC when the people say bad words on air or play “obscene” devil music or, now, to enforce anti DEI initiatives or punish coverage that Trump doesn’t like.

But I think this is opening up a productive discussion because frankly this isn’t just a product of the Trump administration. It’s scary how openly and actively he’s going after media companies who have wronged him and trying to stymie the freedom with which journalists can actively report on stories, including personal attacks on individuals and extreme litigiousness based on his own skewed idea of what “free speech” is. But Trump’s and his administration’s actions are really just a symptom of a larger problem that has been brewing with our news media for decades, wherein the public interest is lost to the interests of corporate greed and advertising dollars, as it is with campaign finance and in many other areas of our society. Because capitalism has proven time and again that the free market will choose growth over everything else, it is very clearly and explicitly the role of the government to step in and provide for the people, we the people, and protect the public interest from the harshest onslaught of capitalism. There are of course different ways to form a society outside the realm of capitalism and I think we’d be remiss not to acknowledge that this is not the only way we could be doing this, but short an entire global economic overhaul, we are currently stuck within the capitalist experiment and to survive it we quite literally need the government to step in and protect the public good. The extreme unrest of the Great Depression, the loss of trillions of dollars of wealth, sky high unemployment, and the previous decades of extreme abuse of workers and exploitation of markets through monopolization, was what led to that first determination in the 1930s that the news media should serve the public good. That New Deal Era represented a major shift wherein the government actually started providing for the public good because the Gilded Age exposed the extreme depravity of unchecked industrialized capitalism. And those New Deal programs led directly to an increase of quality of life, productivity, stability, and employment and a shrinking of income inequality across the board in America. It was also steeped in racism and many minorities were barred from benefitting from its programs, so it was far from perfect. But the post war boom that our boomer parents were born into was a direct result of the infrastructure put in place by the New Deal combined with government subsidized wartime manufacturing. And Reagan and his deregulatory push was a direct backlash against those New Deal programs orchestrated by monied interests that were sick of having to take the pesky public interest into account in their business dealings, combined with the christian zealots and white supremacist bigots who wanted to impose their views on the masses and were annoyed that they couldn’t do so under our traditional freedom of religion practices or under new civil rights protections that barred them from being openly racist.

All of this to say, the actions of Brendan Carr in attempting to control what the media is allowed to say and punish those outlets that don’t toe the line for the government, are a foreseeable result when the public good is cast aside for private profit and then that private profit is, in turn, allowed to buy and sell our politicians. Capitalism has completely unraveled the purpose of government and authoritarianism is actually the obvious end result of all of this.

And Trump has indicated no intention of letting up, despite numerous court losses especially around his administration’s attempts to defund public media. Last week, the DOJ through attorney general Pam Bondi released a memo directing the agency to rescind its news media guidelines and create a new policy. The guidelines inform prosecutors on how to issue subpoenas, court orders, or search warrants to access journalists’ testimony, work product, and other records. The guidelines explicitly prohibit the DOJ from using investigative tools to force journalists to disclose information about their work relating to classified information obtained in the course of their newsgathering efforts, including confidential informants. The new policy has not been dropped yet but you can bet it is going to give prosecutors more leeway when it comes to going after journalists for the work they’re doing. As Bruce Brown, president of the Reporters Committee said, “Some of the most consequential reporting in U.S. history — from Watergate to warrantless wiretapping after 9/11 — was and continues to be made possible because reporters have been able to protect the identities of confidential sources and uncover and report stories that matter to people across the political spectrum. Strong protections for journalists serve the American public by safeguarding the free flow of information.” But of course that’s exactly the point, meddling journalists going in and finding information that bad actors in the government are trying to keep quiet is the bane of any dictator’s existence. Which is why the media and journalists are the first to be targeted and brought to heel in any good authoritarian regime.

Trump often praises and is compared to Hungarian dictator Victor Orban, so I was curious to see how press freedom is limited over in Hungary. Orban took power in 2010, so his government is a bit farther along in the authoritarian experiment. Some of the first things they did when taking power, however, was to fire public media leaders and journalists and pack the country’s media regulator and the national public media company MTVA with Orban loyalists, to the point that the MTVA is now a state media apparatus in which editors maintain tight control over what is reported and the type of language used in reporting. And in 2018, the government gained tighter control over the media when it established a private press and media foundation where it could consolidate pro-Orban media. Owners of major media companies that were close to Orban chose to transfer ownership of their media outlets to the foundation, so that it now controls over 470 media outlets. Because Orban claimed this conglomeration was in the public interest, and because he’s undermined the rule of law and of the courts, he was able to bypass rules against anti competitive behavior. Journalists also are not given free access to government information and sources. Freedom of information requests go unanswered, journalists are barred from accessing public officials. Information that is released is redacted or illegible. And many journalists report they have been targeted with spyware and are subject to smear campaigns by pro-government outlets to try to intimidate them into silence.

The Reporters without Borders 2024 press freedom index ranks Hungary 67th on press freedom. The United States fell to 55th place this year, and when the index is released for 2025 it would be a surprise to no one if the ranking fell again to land closer to Hungary. How the Trump regime handles the media won’t exactly mirror what’s happened in Hungary, for example I can’t see a group of media owners handing over their companies to a national foundation. However there are already a number of equivalents in place. The fact is that monopolization has already been successful in the United States media landscape. There’s no need to create a national foundation to allow Trump to exercise more control over the media. There are approximately 6 leaders he needs to effectively intimidate, or who are billionaires and already in his pocket. He doesn’t need to rely on others to conduct smear campaigns of journalists when he can use Truth Social and Twitter to target individuals with a single post and his followers will do the rest of the abuse. I think we will see continued efforts under the Trump administration to fire whatever government media leaders it can–like his attempt to fire members of the board of the corporation for public broadcasting, a Congressionally created corporation meant to have independence from the government. Those board members have sued and the court seems likely to find that it was a complete overreach of Trump’s presidential powers given that the board members are explicitly not government employees. He has also attempted to remove funding from the corporation for public broadcasting and go after publicly funded news like NPR and PBS. I think as we move forward we will see some mirroring of what’s happening in Hungary in the form of open denials of freedom of information requests, continued removal of news agencies from access to the President, like he did with the associated press when they refused to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, and that will continue to ramp up in an attempt to hide the truth and bar access to as many journalists as possible.

These efforts, as well as Brendan Carr’s work trying to intimidate large media conglomerates into submission, will be and has been met with swift backlash in the form of lawsuits and rejection by journalists and news leaders like 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens. And its important that journalists and those with a large platform continue to speak out against media and journalist intimidation efforts. That being said, I think Trump and the people pulling the strings behind the scenes know that these efforts will result in a lot of lawsuits, lawsuits that cost a lot of taxpayer dollars which they seem unconcerned about, but the lawsuits will be worth it and the push back will be worth it because the effects will still linger. The fear of retribution, of being targeted by the regime, here as with in Hungary, will lead to the closure of media companies, to the capitulation of media companies like we’ve already seen, with Paramount apparently interested in settling the 60 minutes lawsuit in order to ensure their precious merger can move forward, and to the chilling of the free speech of journalists, especially independent journalists who don’t have the power of Paramount behind them if they were to face lawsuits. And that is largely the point of a lot of what the Trump regime is doing–trying their best to win but knowing that even if they don’t the damage will be done and their actions will slowly erode any opposition out of fear of retribution. Which is why it is so heartening and so important to amplify the voices of people, especially from larger entities with the power to oppose him, who speak truth to power in these moments. Like Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes on Sunday explicitly naming Paramount and Trump, like Harvard refusing to capitulate. I will continue to show up as well to scream about stuff to my little corner of the internet, hi that’s you, and I hope you will continue to show up in whatever way makes sense using whatever power you can to speak truth to power, to amplify the messages of the oppressed, to stand up for what’s right, and to support the journalists and news media that you rely on through your time, your money, your shares, etc. If you’re not sure where to get started you can try giving this video a thumbs up, commenting below to share your ideas for how to speak truth to power, or share my videos with friends or relatives that need to hear the hard truths. Some of them are too far gone but I still stand by the idea that an informed electorate is necessary for a functioning democracy. The government is doing everything it can to bar all of us from being informed and well-educated, so doing what we can to fight back against that is important every day.

And if you’re interested in joining MY online community and supporting my work please consider joining me over on Patreon where you’ll get access to all these videos completely ad free and uncensored, plus regular discussions and community building at a time when that feels really hard and not common enough. Patreon dot com slash leeja miller.

Thank you to my multi-platinum patrons Marc, Thomas Orf, Sarah Shelby, Art, David, R_H, L’etranger (Lukus), Joshua Cole, Thomas Johnson, and Tay. Your generosity makes this channel what it is, so thank you!

And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from Monday about the deportation of children who were born in the US.

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