Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission chair appointed by President Donald Trump, has threatened to take away TV licenses over news coverage he doesn’t like. Legally, he can’t do that.
But in the age of Trump, a threat can sometimes be as effective as the law — which is probably why Carr keeps jawboning media owners and reporters with statements unlikely to hold up under legal challenge.
In a presidency known for flouting norms, this is yet another way the Trump administration exercises power.
The most recent incident occurred on Saturday. Reacting to Iran conflict coverage, Carr warned broadcasters that airing “hoaxes and news distortions” could lead to the loss of their federally granted licenses. Broadcasters are at risk, Carr posted on X, if they don’t “correct course before their license renewals come up.”
Carr wasn’t overly specific, but he didn’t have to be. As FCC chair, Carr has issued several warnings that echo his patron’s complaints about the three legacy broadcast TV networks: ABC, CBS and NBC. (The FCC grants licenses to individual broadcast stations, not national broadcast networks; cable networks such as MS NOW or CNN and streaming services including Netflix aren’t licensed at all.)
Indeed, Carr’s Saturday post quoted Trump’s own social media complaint that some news reports about the military action he initiated against Iran were “intentionally misleading.” Trump endorsed Carr’s threats Sunday in another Truth Social rant, this one suggesting that media outlets that report inaccurately during wartime should be tried for treason — a crime punishable by death.
Carr’s fist-shaking at broadcasters generates headlines and alarm, but it’s notable that his threats have resulted in exactly zero license-revocation hearings to date. Carr, an experienced telecommunications lawyer, surely knows that taking away any station’s license would involve a yearslong legal battle — one that he’d be highly likely to lose once the FCC’s decision were subject to independent judicial review.
That’s because broadcasters have broad free-speech protections that prohibit the government from penalizing them for what they put on the air. “The FCC can issue threats all day long, but it is powerless to carry them out,” Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner, posted Sunday on X. “Such threats violate the First Amendment and will go nowhere.”
In its nearly 100-year history, the FCC has rarely gone after a license. Typically, the commission acts only in instances in which a station owner has been convicted of a felony or has repeatedly lied to the agency, according to Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a veteran media attorney. Not once has the FCC sought its highest penalty for a station that, as Carr put it, “distorts” the news.
Contrary to what Trump and Carr suggest, the agency can’t penalize a broadcaster for merely reporting inaccurately or holding an opinion the president and FCC chair dislike. To meet the FCC’s own standard of distortion, the agency must find that a station deliberately tried to trick viewers or listeners by, say, re-enacting a drug bust and presenting it as the real thing or using “file” footage as if it were part of a breaking news story. The FCC has cited stations only eight times over the past 50 years, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s.
Still, Carr’s devotion to Trump’s media bashing produces results. After late-night host Jimmy Kimmel commented on the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September, enraging conservatives, Carr threatened ABC’s station licenses. Here, too, the threat was legally dubious, but ABC’s parent, The Walt Disney Company, took Kimmel’s show off the air for a few days after local affiliates said they would preempt the show themselves. The backdrop to all this is another action Carr took shortly after taking office. In January 2025, Carr revived a previously dismissed complaint alleging news distortion by CBS News over a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris in 2024 — one that was already the subject of a lawsuit filed by Trump. The investigation effectively tied up the FCC’s approval of an $8 billion proposed merger between Skydance Media and CBS’ parent company, Paramount. To remove the regulatory roadblock, Paramount settled Trump’s lawsuit by paying him $16 million and making other commitments, such as installing an ombudsman to review CBS News’ reporting. Once the suit was settled, the FCC approved the Skydance-Paramount merger. If Carr thought he had the law on his side, presumably he’d initiate proceedings and face whatever challenges arise in court. But he has a short cut to his and the president’s preferred outcome. Even the prospect of regulatory trouble can lead to preemptive and conciliatory action. In December 2024, Disney agreed to pay $16 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit against Disney-owned ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos, a move widely read as a decision not to challenge the power of the incoming president and risk an uncertain fate at an FCC headed by a key Trump ally. Carr has also publicly accused Comcast, the parent company of NBC News and former parent of MS NOW — both a frequent target of Trump bashing — of news distortion in reporting its outlets did about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland immigrant wrongfully deported last year by the Trump administration. Carr’s weaponization of news distortion prompted a bipartisan group of former FCC officials to petition the agency last year to repeal the policy. So far, the agency hasn’t acted on the petition. The FCC licenses hundreds of radio stations, including those that broadcast conservative talk radio programs, most of them routinely supportive of the Trump administration. There’s no record of Carr second-guessing anything these stations have broadcast. Nor has he questioned the reporting of local TV stations owned by Sinclair Inc. and Nexstar Media Group, the two companies that temporarily declined to air Kimmel’s late-night program after Carr’s criticism. Nexstar is seeking the FCC’s approval to buy a rival station owner, Tegna Inc., for $6.2 billion in a major consolidation of the business. If Carr thought he had the law on his side, presumably he’d initiate proceedings and face whatever challenges arise in court. But he has a shortcut to his and the president’s preferred outcome: He’s put the bully in the bully pulpit.
Paul Farhi is a former media reporter for The Washington Post, where he was a staff writer for more than 35 years. He writes about the media industry for The Atlantic, The Daily Beast and Columbia Journalism Review, among other outlets. 
