FCC Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington in different statements responded to letters written by two Democrat members on the House Energy and Commerce Committee that were sent to 12 cables, satellite, and streaming companies.
“To the House Democrats that used their official letterhead to launch this inquiry, I would say this: Your demand to know the ‘moral principles’ that guide a private entity’s decision about what news to carry cannot be reconciled with bedrock principles of free speech and journalistic freedom,” Carr said.
In their letters, the Democrat House members pressed the companies to take measures they claimed would fight the spread of “misinformation.”
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Reps. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.) and Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.) claimed that right-leaning Fox, Newsmax, and One America News had published “misinformation” after the November 2020 elections and about COVID-19, even though that was not the case and the news outlets were only publishing news. Guess Dems are trying to cancel every little thing that does not fit with their opinion.
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Their letters also demanded answers to why the carriers were carrying these television outlets.
The carriers were asked what moral or ethical principles they use in deciding which channels to broadcast, how many subscribers tuned into the networks in the weeks leading to the presidential election, and whether they’ve taken opposing actions against any channel in the wake of the election or the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol.
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Carr said that the two House Democrats had “selectively targeted” several news media outlets for their coverage of political events, saying that such efforts send a clear and troubling message of “these regulated entities will pay a price if the targeted newsrooms do not conform to Democrats’ preferred political narratives.”
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“This is a chilling transgression of the free speech rights that every media outlet in this country enjoys,” he said.
The commissioner remained by reminding Americans that discourse on matters of public interest should be “robust, uninhibited, and wide open.”
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“More speech is better than less. Yet the concerted effort by Democrats to drive political dissent from the public square represents a marked departure from these First Amendment norms. A newsroom’s decision about what stories to cover and how to frame them should be beyond the reach of any government official, not targeted by them,” he added.
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Simington repeated Carr’s concerns, defining the two House Democrats’ conduct as “worrying.” He said that the lawmakers were applying “overbroad and vague labels of ‘misinformation’ to any media reportage that calls into question their preferred political narratives, and have sought to intimidate into silence those who would distribute on their platforms disfavored points of view.”
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