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Trump’s FCC chair wants American media to work like Iran’s state TV | Caitlin Vogus

Over the weekend, Donald Trump fumed on Truth Social about newspapers covering attacks on US tanker aircrafts in Saudi Arabia. Within hours, Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr reposted Trump’s rant and vowed to revoke the licenses of broadcasters who air what he called “fake news”. For some extra brownie points, Carr tossed in a line about Trump’s “landslide election victory”, too.

Early on Monday, Trump completed the sycophantic cycle with a second post announcing that he’s “thrilled” by Carr’s threats and accusing unnamed media outlets of “treason” and a lack of patriotism for reporting on AI fakes linked to Iran. (It’s not clear what Trump was referring to, since the media has regularly reported on those fakes to debunk them.)

Carr’s threats make no sense under the law, and he knows they’re wrong. But that’s never stopped him before. Carr has attacked late night comedians, talk shows, major networks, public broadcasters, and radio stations, while purging the word “independent” from the FCC website. His message is clear: displease Trump, and the FCC will make you pay a price. Every single time Carr has deemed a news report “distortion” or a comedic wisecrack outside the “public interest”, it’s been something that nettles the man whose face is on his lapel pin, Donald Trump.

But just because the threats are legally hollow doesn’t make them ineffective. Station owners, wary of expensive legal battles or merger delays, often capitulate rather than fight back. They bury reporting critical of the Trump administration or simply pull back on political reporting or commentary all together.

That’s exactly what Carr and Trump want when they make nonsensical threats against news outlets over their Iran war reporting. The Trump administration doesn’t want the public thinking about the deaths and injuries of American soldiers, the costs of the war, or its lack of planning or strategy. One of the tools it uses to silence that reporting are threats that make the media self-censor.

War reporting is already difficult. Very few journalists are in Iran, and a communications and internet blackout there makes verifying information nearly impossible. Iran is pumping out propaganda, and officials in the United States and Israel have their own interests in shaping news coverage. Journalists work hard to get things right, but mistakes are inevitable. If even minor mistakes could bring down the hammer from the FCC, journalists will be paralyzed or purposely silenced by their bosses.

And the Trump post Carr amplified did not even identify a mistake – it just took issue with the framing of the headline, echoing Pete Hegseth’s call for reporters to be more “patriotic” by cheerleading the war. If Carr’s unprecedented policing of the public interest now extends to that level of – threatening licenses over headline phrasing – licensees have no way of predicting what censorship he’ll deem within the FCC’s purview next.

We’ve seen licensees self-censor to appease Carr before. When the FCC targeted California radio station KCBS over its coverage of an immigration raid, the station owner responded by discouraging reporting on “controversial” topics and heavily policing news stories about politics or the Trump administration.

Doug Sovern, a former investigative and political reporter for KCBS who’s now retired, recounted that KCBS’s owners “ran for their lives and were terrified” after Carr launched an investigation into the station. Managers spiked news reports that Sovern wanted to run on his live interview program on politics, including an interview with Representative Katie Porter after she announced her run for California governor for fear she would say something “anti-Trump”.

Carr is using the same playbook against news outlets over their Iran war coverage because it’s worked before. And it will continue to work unless the media and lawmakers stand firm against him.

News executives must wake up to the fact that caving to Trump and his minions once doesn’t mean that you’re safe. It just means the bullies have figured out you’ll cough up your lunch money every time they demand it. Media companies must stop surrendering out of convenience and even fight back when necessary.

Viewers must also make clear that they don’t want to watch a state-run nightly news. For every news outlet that’s caved, there are others that haven’t. Those outlets and independent journalists deserve Americans’ clicks, subscriptions and support.

Finally, lawmakers must act. While it’s unlikely to happen in this Congress, they should remove Carr as the head of the FCC. At the very least, they must speak out against him, and against Trump’s attacks on the free press. So far, only a few Democrats and one Republican have condemned Carr’s latest threat.

If Carr and Trump’s attacks on the press aren’t stopped, the outcome could be dire. The president and the FCC chair don’t want an independent press. They want a press that operates more like that in, well, Iran: largely obedient, state-run broadcasters that run propaganda praising a supreme leader and his wars. It’s hard to think of anything less patriotic.