Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has escalated his rhetorical attack on Disney this week, accusing the media conglomerate of orchestrating a "campaign of misinformation" in response to two separate regulatory investigations.
ABC, Disney's broadcast network, launched a public awareness campaign urging viewers to submit comments to the FCC regarding investigations into whether the daytime talk show "The View" violated equal-time provisions for political candidates and whether ABC should retain its broadcast licenses for eight local television stations. The campaign prompted more than 51,000 comments on "The View" investigation and nearly 40,000 on the license renewal matter.
Carr characterized Disney's effort as "a fairly standard, off-the-shelf PR strategy" designed to "litigate the case in the media." He accused ABC of making a false claim that "the FCC wants to control who is allowed to appear on the show," countering that the FCC is simply "enforcing the provisions of the Communications Act that Congress has passed."
Democratic Commissioner Anna M. Gomez contends that Carr is leveraging the license renewal process to apply political pressure on Disney. "It is so clear that this early license renewal is being done to pressure Disney," Gomez said. "This is all designed to pressure Disney to cave."
Carr, who is closely aligned with the incoming Trump administration, has moved aggressively on these investigations since taking the chairmanship. ABC and its parent company have been periodic critics of Trump's conduct and statements.
The public documents available so far do not establish definitively that discrimination occurred at Disney or that "The View" violated equal-time rules. Carr noted that "we have not made a decision one way or the other."
When asked whether the high volume of comments defending ABC would influence the FCC's decision-making, Carr suggested the commission had "ways of combing through" submissions and would evaluate them on the merits.
Gomez suggested that Carr's office would "cherry-pick the submissions of partisan organizations to support its goal of silencing critics" and expressed skepticism that public opinion would have any real impact on the outcome.
The Communications Act grants the FCC authority to oversee broadcast licensing and enforce equal-time provisions. But regulatory legitimacy depends on whether the process of determining violations appears insulated from political motivation.
The available record does not yet show whether the FCC was correct on the underlying facts. But when a chairman with explicit political alignment initiates multiple investigations into a network that has criticized his political allies and then publicly dismisses that network's defense as "misinformation" while proceedings remain undecided, the appearance of political leverage is unavoidable.
Both the facts of the underlying investigations and the process by which those facts are determined warrant close scrutiny.
