Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr faced intense criticism Wednesday from Senate lawmakers over concerns he used government power to promote the stifling of free speech.
Carr was grilled by Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee over controversial statements he made about comedian Jimmy Kimmel that critics viewed as federal attempts to crack down on political satire, which is protected speech under the First Amendment.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) called for Carr’s resignation, saying he had turned the FCC “into the ‘Federal Censorship Commission.’” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) called Carr a “solid, knowledgeable person,” who is acting “out of character,” with policies that “will not age well.” Multiple lawmakers have also referenced committee chairman Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) September statement suggesting Carr’s comments on Kimmel were “dangerous as hell” to argue there is bipartisan consensus that the FCC chairman had crossed the line.
Carr declined to retract his comments during the hearing despite facing acute pressure to do so.
“Democrats at the time were saying that we explicitly threatened to pull a license if Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t fired,” he said in response to a line of questioning from Schatz.
“That never happened. That was nothing more than projection and distortion by Democrats,” he said. “What I am saying is any broadcaster that uses the airways, whether radio or TV, has to comply with the public interest in it. Licenses are not sacred cows. Yes, you can do things to lose a license, but if we want to change that, that’s up to Congress.… I’m not looking at things that are offensive or awful, to use your words. I’m looking at things that are consistent with our public interest rules and regulations.”
The tense debate in the hearing centered on Carr’s reaction to the controversial comments Kimmel made during his late-night monologue in response to conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Carr suggested the FCC had “a strong case” to take action against ABC and broadcasters that air Kimmel, during a September interview on the Benny Johnson Show. The interview triggered a flurry of accusations that the Trump administration was responsible for pressuring ABC into ultimately putting Kimmel on a roughly one-week suspension.
“These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead,” Carr told Johnson. “They have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to act in the public interest.”
When pressed this week on whether the FCC holds jurisdiction over political satire under the agency’s “public interest standard,” Carr responded that the commission has “jurisdiction with respect to the broadcast airways, uniquely, to ensure that their operations are in the public interest.”
When pressed on whether it was appropriate for him to issue a public opinion on the Kimmel controversy “in your official capacity,” Carr again deflected, saying his job is to “implement the law passed by Congress, and Congress has said that broadcast is fundamentally different, that there’s a public interest standard.”
“I was very clear. There was no threat in there to revoke a license,” the FCC chairman said of his previous statements on Kimmel. “If you look at the evidence, the express statements by every single company involved, from NextStar to Sinclair to Disney, as recently as last week, are that they made these business decisions [to suspend Kimmel] on their own. The record is clear on this.”
At one point, the back and forth between lawmakers and Carr on Kimmel turned into a tangent on President Donald Trump’s widely critiqued comments on social media about Hollywood director Rob Reiner’s recent murder.
“So do you think it’s appropriate for, after a horrific murder and the stabbing, the stabbing of Rob Reiner and his wife … do you think it’s appropriate for someone to say that it happened when they know better, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as Trump derangement syndrome?” Klobuchar questioned. “And if Jimmy Kimmel had said that, would you have threatened to take him off the air?… This is the kind of stuff that’s going on right now, and yet you are going after broadcast stations, except for Fox, and making threats.”
Carr retorted, “Senator, look, Democrats on this dais are accusing me of engaging in censorship, and now you’re trying to encourage me to police speech on the internet.”
The FCC chairman also caused a stir during the hearing by telling lawmakers the commission is “not formally an independent agency.”
Carr’s statement responded to a line of questioning from Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), who noted that the FCC’s website describes itself as an “independent government agency responsible for implementing and enforcing America’s communications law and regulations.”
WHO IS FCC CHAIRMAN BRENDAN CARR, THE MAN AT THE CENTER OF THE KIMMEL SUSPENSION CONTROVERSY?
“Congress did not include for-cause removal in the Communications Act,” Carr told Luján. “So formally speaking, the FCC is not independent.”
The FCC’s website was changed minutes later to remove the word “independent” from its “About” section after Luján’s questioning, according to Axios.