President Trump’s latest tirade on Truth Social aimed at news coverage of the Iran War sparked a new threat from FCC Chair Brendan Carr. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Brendan warned if broadcasters failed to “operate in public interest” in their framing of the current offensive actions in the Middle East, then they could lose their licenses.
In a lengthy post on X, Carr extolled this latest demand along with Trump’s original post. In it he called for news stations “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.” View the full post below.
Carr continued saying, “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not. And frankly, changing course is in their own business interests since trust in legacy media has now fallen to an all time low of just 9% and are rating disasters.” Stating that the public have subsidized broadcasters for “billions of dollars,” he claims “It is very important to bring trust back into media, which has earned itself the label of fake news.” He finished his statement saying, “When a political candidate is able to win a landslide election victory after in the face of hoaxes and distortions, there is something very wrong. It means the public has lost faith and confidence in the media. And we can’t allow that to happen.”
The alleged misinformation referenced in Trump’s post alleges that the “Fake News Media” has allegedly “intentionally” misled the public with headlines about the five tanker planes that “were supposedly struck down at a Airport in Saudi Arabia, and of no further use.” Trump continued to call out The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal as “Lowlife ‘Papers'” that want “us to lose the War.”
“The plans were not ‘struck’ or ‘destroyed.’ None were destroyed, or close to that, as the Fake News said in headlines.” Trump added via The Hollywood Reporter.
Carr’s post received plenty of push back on X as well as users questioning Grok, the platform’s AI-assistant, on the validity of his statement.
Some X users even pointed out Carr’s previous statements that contradict his line of thinking today.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the FCC does not have jurisdiction over news papers, which Trump mentioned in his post. However, it isn’t far leap to include TV broadcasters as Trump and Carr have threatened certain networks and TV personalities before. Recently, the administration and the FCC chair have called for investigations into ABC’s The View over the Equal Time Rule, and have upheld grudges with the likes of Jimmy Kimmel (Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Teen Titans Go! to the Movies) and Seth Meyers (Saturday Night Live, MacGruber).