Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr warned broadcasters that their licenses would be cancelled if they didn’t “correct course” regarding news coverage.
“Broadcasters who are spreading hoaxes and news distortions — also called fake news — have an opportunity to correct their ways before their license renewals are due,” Carr stated in a social media post on Saturday. “The law is straightforward. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they don’t.”
Carr posted his warning atop a post from President Donald Trump complaining about the coverage of the US-Israeli strikes on Iran. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has also criticized news outlets for war coverage that he claimed “makes the president look bad.”
This is Carr’s latest threat against television broadcasters after Trump has shown dissatisfaction with coverage, or with a specific reporter or late-night talk-show host. Trump has proposed that networks should lose their broadcast license due to unfair coverage. Such licenses don’t apply to cable, streaming, or print outlets.
The FCC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
Even before Trump started his second term, he urged the FCC to “impose the maximum fines and punishment” on CBS for alleged “unlawful and illegal behavior” when it edited a 60 Minutes interview with 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
In September, Carr suggested that local stations risked their broadcast licenses for airing ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! after the late-night host accused Trump supporters of using conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s murder to “score political points.”
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The FCC doesn’t directly license the national networks themselves, and thus can’t take enforcement actions against them directly. Individual local stations — including those owned by the networks and independently owned affiliates — do hold FCC licenses and are legally required to comply with the agency’s rules.
Revoking licenses for content the administration dislikes would be an unprecedented expansion of the FCC’s powers, and some attempts have been successfully challenged in court.
Read More: How Trump’s FCC Is Policing Speech on TV Networks: QuickTake
After Carr’s comments on Kimmel, Nexstar Media Group Inc., the largest owner of local TV stations in the US, removed the show from its 32 ABC stations. Sinclair Inc. also dropped the show from its ABC affiliates. Both companies restored the program to their stations in late September.
The FCC launched an equal-time investigation into ABC’s daytime talk show The View after it had Democratic US Senate candidate James Talarico as a guest in February when he was in the primary. CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert said his network told him he couldn’t air an interview with Talarico because it was worried Carr would view it as a violation of federal fairness rules.
Colbert posted the interview on YouTube, where it received more than 9 million views.