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MaddowBlog-Targeting media content, Brendan Carr, Trump's FCC chair, is haunted by his own standards
Evidently, the FCC chief was against forcing broadcasters to operate “in the public interest” before he was for it.
Targeting media content, Brendan Carr, Trump’s FCC chair, is haunted by his own standards - MSNBC
— (@oc88.bsky.social) 2025-09-18T15:54:25.459Z
apple.news/AiCpSmLmRRC2...
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/brendan-carr-trump-fcc-kimmel-abc-public-interest-standard-rcna232098
After he played a key role in getting late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s show pulled from ABC “indefinitely,” Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, took a victory lap of sorts: He sat down with Fox News’s Sean Hannity — a symbolically significant choice, given Hannity’s alliance with the Trump White House.
There was one phrase that Carr used over and over again during the relatively brief on-air appearance. With a broadcast license, the FCC chairman said, “comes a unique obligation to operate in the public interest.” As the interview progressed, he again said, “We at the FCC are going to enforce the public interest obligation. If there’s broadcasters out there that don’t like it, they can turn their license in to the FCC.”......
In 2022, Carr also wrote, “President Biden is right. Political satire is one of the oldest and most important forms of free speech. It challenges those in power while using humor to draw more people in to the discussion. That’s why people in influential positions have always targeted it for censorship.”
Three years later, Carr appeared on a far-right podcast and referenced his agency’s role in granting broadcast licenses. Referring specifically to a satirist’s comedic monologue, Carr added, “When we see stuff like this, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
Before Senate Republicans agreed to make Carr the FCC chair, he wrote a chapter in the far-right Project 2025 blueprint. “The F.C.C. should promote freedom of speech,” he wrote in the first words of the chapter.
Link to tweet
There was one phrase that Carr used over and over again during the relatively brief on-air appearance. With a broadcast license, the FCC chairman said, “comes a unique obligation to operate in the public interest.” As the interview progressed, he again said, “We at the FCC are going to enforce the public interest obligation. If there’s broadcasters out there that don’t like it, they can turn their license in to the FCC.”......
In 2022, Carr also wrote, “President Biden is right. Political satire is one of the oldest and most important forms of free speech. It challenges those in power while using humor to draw more people in to the discussion. That’s why people in influential positions have always targeted it for censorship.”
Three years later, Carr appeared on a far-right podcast and referenced his agency’s role in granting broadcast licenses. Referring specifically to a satirist’s comedic monologue, Carr added, “When we see stuff like this, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
Before Senate Republicans agreed to make Carr the FCC chair, he wrote a chapter in the far-right Project 2025 blueprint. “The F.C.C. should promote freedom of speech,” he wrote in the first words of the chapter.