Last week, President Donald Trump said ABC and NBC should lose their broadcast licenses because they had dissed him by declining to air his speech about election security. On Wednesday, Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), suggested he is sympathetic to that view, saying ABC's news-coverage decision will figure in the FCC's ongoing review of the broadcast licenses held by Disney, which owns ABC and its TV stations in eight cities.
Carr's comments reinforce the point that his understanding of the "public interest" that broadcasters are legally obligated to serve is indistinguishable from Trump's personal interests. The idea that the FCC should punish news organizations for exercising their editorial judgment in a way that offends the president is plainly inconsistent with the press freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment. But as Carr sees it, his agency has the authority to restrict that freedom in service of his boss's petty vendettas.
