It's like things the mafia does. FYI for people that want to know than to not so others would know for them! If you don't care others will care for you not for your best interest theirs!
~~~~In the administration’s first weeks, Carr unilaterally launched investigations relating to or affecting the editorial decisions of media outlets. Such investigations are likely to have a chilling effect on free speech decision-making of the targets while also serving as a warning to others that they could be targeted as well.
For example, reopening a complaint previously dismissed by the agency in January, Chairman Carr inserted the FCC into candidate Trump’s claim that CBS’s editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris constituted “election interference.” Prior to the election, candidate Trump sued CBS over the matter. After assuming office, the president posted on Truth Social, “CBS should lose its license”—which is a decision that falls within the FCC’s jurisdiction.
Carr linked the allegations against CBS to the pending sale of Paramount Global and its CBS subsidiary, a transaction that requires FCC permission to transfer the broadcast licenses. “I’m pretty confident that that news distortion complaint over the ‘60 Minutes’ transcript is something that is likely to arise in the context of the FCC review of that transaction,” the chairman not-so-subtly warned on Fox News.
At a time when a congressional Republican is calling public broadcasting “communist” and holding hearings on its content, the FCC has targeted public broadcast networks PBS and NPR. “I am writing to inform you that I have asked the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau to open an investigation regarding the airing of NPR and PBS programming across your broadcast member stations,” Carr wrote to the network presidents. The local member stations, he charged, “could be violating federal law … [by] broadcasting underwriting announcements that cross the line to prohibited commercial advertisements.” Expressing the hope that “this investigation may prove relevant to an ongoing legislative debate … whether to stop requiring taxpayers to subsidize NPR and PBS programming,” he added, “for my own part, I do not see a reason why Congress should continue sending taxpayer dollars to NPR and PBS.”
This threat to the funding of public broadcasting, of course, jeopardizes the content those outlets provide. Ironically, it was a Republican-led effort in 1981 that restructured the funding of public broadcasting, reducing direct government support while allowing limited underwriting messages as a financial offset.
Another use of the chairman’s investigatory powers is Carr’s inquiry into the reporting practices of the San Francisco radio station KCBS. The station reported on specific details of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid of office buildings in the city, including the location of the raid and descriptions of ICE vehicles. Speaking on “Fox & Friends,” the chairman justified the investigation on the grounds of determining how KCBS’s reporting “could possibly be consistent with their public interest obligations.”
The FCC’s recent investigations and inquiries reveal a broader strategy to leverage the agency’s regulatory power to affect what the public hears by influencing what media outlets say. Framing editorial discretion as “censorship” and deploying government authority, the Trump FCC is not protecting free speech. It is undermining a practice essential to American democracy.
Further, in a pointed warning that his agency controls broadcasters’ licenses—and will be monitoring their behavior... https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-trump-fcc-s-coercion-cartel
