For nearly a decade, President Donald Trump has been threatening to revoke the broadcast licenses of TV stations that fail to cover him the way he thinks they should. Ajit Pai, who chaired the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) during Trump's first term, was not at all receptive to that idea, saying, "I believe in the First Amendment." But Brendan Carr, the current FCC chairman, has no such constitutional compunctions.
Carr made that clear once again over the weekend, when he warned on X that broadcasters "will lose their licenses" if they fail to "operate in the public interest"—a standard that he seems to think constrains their coverage of the U.S. war with Iran. Carr's threat underlines the anomalous legal status of broadcast journalism, which allows government interference that would be obviously unconstitutional in any other medium.
