Head of FCC threatens broadcaster licenses over critical coverage of Iran war (twitter.com)

by theahura 126 comments 266 points
Read article View on HN

126 comments

[−] _heimdall 63d ago
Here's a crazy thought - if you're the president of the united states, or in his cabinet, and don't like news coverage that makes POTUS look bad regardless of the accuracy, how about you find some big boy pants and do better if you don't want to "look bad."
[−] parineum 63d ago
[flagged]
[−] paulryanrogers 62d ago

> Nothing Obama could have done was going to make Obama look good on Fox News.

So "Fox News" has a massive accuracy problem. Or are they actually only "Fox Commentaries"?

[−] _heimdall 62d ago
I don't think that's limited to only Fox News. Cable news channels today are seem to be a strong majority opinion pieces. They also seem to mostly be mouthpieces today for whomever is coordinating a broader political message they want being discussed.
[−] scuff3d 63d ago
Can you imagine the absolute mayhem at Fox News if Obama had declared himself the greatest president of all time.

Or declared a US company a supply chain risk after trying to weasel out of a contract.

Or, you know, incited a terrorist attack on the US Capitol...

[−] ndsipa_pomu 62d ago
That's different as Fox News is an entertainment channel and not news, despite the name.
[−] CamperBob2 62d ago
And I'll never understand that. If I sell horsemeat in my grocery store, but label it as A5 wagyu beef, there will be legal consequences. When Fox sells "entertainment" (meaning lies) labeled as "news," there are none.

So why do they get all the breaks? False advertising and fraud aren't covered by the First Amendment.

[−] scuff3d 62d ago
Unfortunately, there is a fairly large part of the population who disagrees with that.
[−] ethbr1 63d ago
It's almost like the stuff right wing media falsely claimed Obama and Biden were doing.

Like they were preparing for someone to actually do it, because it already happened with the last guy, right?

[−] _heimdall 63d ago
I was going of the OP article here, the quote is a concern that it makes Trump look bad, not that it is inaccurate reporting.

I do agree with you though, if reporting is wrong then that's the problem. In those cases, and there are plenty, the concern raised should be inaccuracy rather than optics though.

[−] bediger4000 63d ago
How do you know the coverage is "wrong"? I mean, no news org, not NYT, not Fox, not WaPo, not even NPR can determine if Trump is lying. Sure, they occasionally note that what he says is "baseless", but never lies. So how are you going to determine wrong?
[−] brandensilva 63d ago
Propaganda state run networks are for dictatorships, not democracies.
[−] curt15 63d ago
"Should the government censor speech it doesn't like? Of course not. The FCC doesn't have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the \"public interest\"." -- Brendan Carr 2019
[−] allears 63d ago
Well there's a clear 1st Amendment violation. Wonder if he'll get sued, and if so, wonder if the plaintiff will win, and if so, whether Carr will abide by any judgment.
[−] jauntywundrkind 63d ago
It's deplorable that there's such empty silence on Carr and his incessant snowflake whining from the right. For a party that has crowed so much about 1A! It's unfathomable, just depraved, to have a party that will complain and whine so loudly, and then have nothing at all to say when you have a FCC commissioner asserting that broadcast rights means saying only what the government says is good.

Utterly deplorable. This man is a high traitor to the constitution and this nation. And the right: seemingly AWOL, on an issue they claimed was so important! It's so fallen. It's so unfortunate the nation haa to be sundered by people of so low moral and political regard, people who seemingly care so little about values and democracy and the nation.

[−] foogazi 63d ago
They can’t take your license away if you don’t have one
[−] zimpenfish 62d ago
The Twitter Files contingent are awfully quiet all of a sudden.
[−] jmclnx 63d ago
A better link:

https://xcancel.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/203285541423304717...

BTW, the link is a waste of your time reading it, it is just the current US regime whining again.

[−] xtiansimon 62d ago
So it's a Tweet allegation-- Do we know what specifically what the Chaiman objects to?
[−] ouraf 61d ago
Have someone already brought the "reinstate the Fairness Doctrine" talking point for this issue? The best back and forth arguments happen under it.
[−] tombert 63d ago
Fucking Christ.

I still don’t understand how anyone heard Trump bragging about how he’s going to “open up those libel laws”, in addition to all the other idiotic shit that he said, and still decided to vote for him.

I am sure people had their reasons, and maybe some of them even weren’t racist, but I am still having trouble comprehending how anyone didn’t see all this shit coming.

https://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/02/donald-trump...

[−] wewewedxfgdf 63d ago
YouTube is a problem, people speaking their minds.
[−] jacquesm 63d ago
Maybe if we're going to name the department of defense the department of war we can go all the way and rename the FCC to the 'ministry of propaganda'?

A free press is worth its weight in gold. If you let go of that you're going to lose more than you bargain for. All those free speech advocates are a bit quiet on this, wonder what happened to them.

[−] abdelhousni 63d ago
It was already done before and now Trump and Israeli lobby are doing the same with Social networks and US media

"The Nazi assault on the press, publishing, and scholarship was more than censorship. It was an attempt to monopolize reality." https://brewminate.com/words-under-siege-hitlers-assault-on-...

[−] GianFabien 63d ago
The Gaslighter in Chief wants to abolish the First Amendment.
[−] bananatype 63d ago
Feels eerily similar to Rodrigo Duterte's threats to Philippine broadcaster ABS-CBN (and in that case, he really made good on the threat and shut down its transmitters).