The CAR complaints were dismissed in January 2025 by then-FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and then revived by Carr after Trump appointed him to the chairmanship. Carr has continued making allegations of news distortion, including when he threatened to revoke licenses from ABC stations that air Jimmy Kimmel’s show.
During the Kimmel controversy, Carr said he was trying “to empower local TV stations to serve the needs of the local communities.” The FCC subsequently opened a proceeding titled, “Empowering Local Broadcast TV Stations to Meet Their Public Interest Obligations: Exploring Market Dynamics Between National Programmers and Their Affiliates.”
The FCC invited public comments on whether to adopt regulations “in light of the changes in the broadcast market that have led to anticompetitive leverage and behavior by large networks.” This could involve prohibiting certain kinds of contract provisions in agreements between networks and affiliate stations and strengthening the rights of local stations to reject national programming.
FCC criticized for attacks on media
The “Empowering Local Broadcast TV Stations” proceeding is the one in which the Center for American Rights submitted its comments. Besides discussing NPR and PBS, the group said that national networks “indoctrinate the American people from their left-wing perspective.”
“The consistent bias on ABC’s The View, for instance, tells women in red states who voted for President Trump that they are responsible for putting in office an autocratic dictator,” the Center for American Rights said.
The FCC proceeding drew comments yesterday from the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC), which criticized Carr’s war against the media. “The Public Notice frames this proceeding as an effort to ‘empower local broadcasters’ in their dealings with national networks. But… recent FCC actions have risked using regulatory authority not to promote independent journalism, but to influence newsroom behavior, constrain editorial decision-making, and encourage outcomes aligned with the personal or political interests of elected officials,” the NHMC said.
The group said it supports “genuine local journalism and robust competition,” but said:
policies that reshape the balance of power between station groups, networks, and newsrooms cannot be separated from the broader regulatory environment in which they operate. Several of the Commission’s recent interventions—including coercive conditions attached to the Skydance/Paramount transaction, and unlawful threats made to ABC and its affiliate stations in September demanding they remove Jimmy Kimmel’s show from the airwaves—illustrate how regulatory tools can be deployed in ways that undermine media freedom and risk political interference in programming and editorial decisions.
