FCC Chairman Warns About ABC's Decision Not To Carry Trump's Speech

Key Points:

• FCC Chairman Brendan Carr indicated that ABC’s decision not to broadcast President Trump’s speech will be part of the agency’s early review of its broadcast licenses, focusing on whether broadcasters meet public interest obligations.
• Trump criticized ABC and NBC for not airing his speech and suggested they should lose their broadcast licenses, although both networks streamed the speech online.
• The FCC already initiated an early review of ABC’s station licenses, partly due to Disney’s diversity practices, and may include scrutiny of the decision not to air the speech; NBC’s parent company Comcast is also under investigation for similar reasons.
• ABC has condemned the FCC’s review as coercive and an attack on editorial independence, while FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez argued that broadcasters have First Amendment rights to decide what content to air and criticized the FCC’s actions as politically motivated.
• The networks have also previously declined to air speeches by Presidents Biden and Obama, with concerns that Trump’s speech on election security might be overly political and echo unfounded election fraud claims.