Trump’s FCC Must Smash Corporate Media’s ‘Censorship Cartel’

Remember that time corporate media used its waning influence to interfere in a presidential election?  Yes, that did just happen.

But the leftists in charge of ABC News, CBS News, the Washington Post, and other major players in the accomplice media want you to forget about all of that. Move on. Pretend that they are legitimate and objective news sources, not the collective mouthpiece of the Democrat Party that they really are. 

The folks at the Center for American Rights (CAR) don’t intend to let them forget. 

The Chicago-based public interest law firm, “dedicated to protecting Americans’ most fundamental, constitutional rights,” has filed complaints with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Election Commission asserting that the news outlets have violated broadcast and election law — and the public’s trust. And some important people are paying attention, too, including President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FCC. 

‘A Hit-Job on Trump’

Following September’s presidential debate in which ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis stacked the deck for Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris while repeatedly “fact-checking” Trump, the center filed complaints alleging “clear sponsor favoritism.” ABC failed to uphold standards of fairness governing use of the public’s airwaves, the complaint contends. 

“Slanting the debate could influence public opinion in ways that undermine democratic processes, which is why the FCC’s standards for candidates’ use of the airwaves are built on neutrality and fairness,” the law firm asserts in a press release. 

ABC also violated federal campaign finance rules against corporate influence in elections, the complaint alleges. In essence, the network gave a very lucrative contribution to the Harris campaign through its biased debate without recording the in-kind expenditure. 

“To avoid an illegal corporate contribution, a debate must provide ‘fair and impartial treatment of candidates.’ The debate was anything but ‘fair and impartial’ — it was designed and delivered as a hit-job on Trump, and thus was a campaign contribution to Harris,” the center states. 

‘Manipulate the News’

Days later, the law firm filed an FCC complaint against WCBS-TV, a CBS-owned station, for engaging in “significant and intentional news distortion” involving “60 Minutes’” infamous cut-and-splice interview with Harris. CBS viewers got two different answers in response to a foreign policy question: the standard Kamala Harris word salad garble in a promotional story on the Sunday morning “Face the Nation” and then a cleaned-up, more lucid response that aired on that evening’s “60 Minutes” broadcast. The center demanded CBC release the full, unedited transcript of the interview, which the network has to date refused to do. 

“I’m curious to see when their lawyers finally do submit their briefs, how are they going to explain to the [FCC], and really to the American people, that they have a right to hide key evidence on whether or not they’ve been actively manipulating the news,” Daniel Suhr, president of the Center for American Rights told me on the “Simon Conway Show” in Des Moines. “And just because the election is over, it doesn’t mean that this problem is going away.”

‘I’ve Got News for Them’ 

Then, less than a week before the election, the center filed an FEC complaint against The Washington Post related to the newspaper’s social media blitz pushing its Trump attack pieces. Apparently nothing on Harris. The barrage followed news that WaPo billionaire owner Jeff Bezos had decided the news outlet would stay out of the presidential endorsement business in the election. Not only did the Post’s leftist newsroom go apoplectic, the publication’s liberal reader base fled in droves.  

While the Post is afforded a great deal of latitude under the freedom of the press umbrella, it’s one-sided Facebook campaign pushing anti-Trump stories runs afoul of the FEC’s campaign finance rules, according to the complaint. 

“If you spend money on social media attacking a candidate in the days before an election, that’s campaign advocacy,” Suhr told me in the radio interview. “And the Washington Post seems to think that because it’s a media organization that somehow it’s special. I’ve got news for them, that’s not the case. The First Amendment protects you, it protects me, and it protects the Washington Post on an equal basis. And the same is true with the federal campaign finance law, which applies to us on an equal basis.”

And just a day before the election, the law firm filed an FCC complaint against WNBC, NBC’s flagship station, alleging a “willful violation of equal time.” The complaint was in response to Saturday Night Live’s horrendous opening skit featuring Harris, in effect a “free commercial promoting one candidate the weekend before the presidential election.” 

Taking heat, NBC ran Trump campaign ads the next day during NASCAR coverage and at the end of Sunday Night Football reportedly in an attempt to fill the equal time gap. 

‘Smash this Censorship Cartel’

Corporate media’s political games are not sitting well with members of the FCC, particularly the man likely to lead it. 

A day before the election, FCC Republican member Nathan Simington on his X account urged the networks to “take these credible allegations seriously.” 

Brendan Carr, top Republican on the commission and Trump’s selection for FCC chairman, has called on CBS to release the unedited transcript of the “60 Minutes” interview with Harris. 

“I don’t think this needs to be a federal case because I think CBS should release it … then that would inoculate, entirely, CBS from that FCC complaint,” Carr told Fox Business in October. 

More recently, Carr said the FCC could weigh the “60 Minutes” complaint in the agency’s review of liberal Skydance Media’s bid to acquire CBS parent Paramount Global. It’s a behemoth deal with a lot of tentacles, but the FCC does have to sign off on the transfer of CBS-owned stations, as TVTech recently reported. 

Following the election, Carr told Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” that the status quo in the so-called legacy media has to change.  

“Jeff Bezos just recently did an op-ed where he said that Americans don’t trust the news media. He said now they’re the least trusted of all. And I think he’s speaking a lot of truth there,” Carr said, adding that there’s much the FCC can do on that front. 

“Broadcasters are differently situated than other speakers. They get free access to a valuable public resource, the airwaves. And they’re licensed by the FCC. And the exchange for that is they have to serve the public interest. I think it’s important that we take another look at that, and we reinvigorate it.”

Corporate media and fellow leftist outlets are shivering in their Birkenstocks over Carr’s planned review of broadcast television, and just how he’d like to reinvigorate it. In short, they see their dominance of the political narrative in America threatened by a force beyond the weight of their own arrogance and greed. 

Carr this week sent a powerful message to social media giants that have played fast and loose with “disinformation,” vowing to break up the “censorship cartel.”  

“I think Americans have been seeing an unprecedented surge in censorship, particularly over the last couple of years,” Carr said on NewsNation’s “Cuomo.” “It’s going to be one of my top priorities, is trying to smash this censorship cartel.” 

Trump’s nominee has been highly critical of tech titans Alphabet, Google, Meta, and Microsoft and their partnerships with phony “fact-checker” NewsGuard, a federally funded company that, as my colleague Joy Pullmann reports, “works to eliminate readership and revenue for outlets that report information that contradicts Democrat narratives.” The Federalist, The Daily Wire, and the state of Texas have joined forces in suing the State Department for pumping counterterrorism cash into NewsGuard’s censorship tools, directly targeting The Federalist and The Daily Wire, among others.

‘Equality Principle’ 

Holding corporate media accountable for the politics they played in the most recent election is a good place to start for Trump’s FCC and FEC. 

Suhr, of the American Rights Center, says much has changed since the founding of the republic when the press was literally a machine that pressed letters down on a broad sheet. The forms of communication were limited in 1787, so “the press” was protected as it was known. 

“And somehow in the 1960s and ‘70s we got this idea that the press, as that phrase is used in the First Amendment, refers to this super special little clique of full-time journalists and major media outlets and that they get special First Amendment protection that the rest of us don’t get because they’re the press. And that’s just not true. It’s not true historically. It’s not true legally,” Suhr said. “And I think the Supreme Court as recently as 2010 in Citizens United made very clear there is an equality principle inherent in the First amendment that every speaker has the same rights, and every idea has the same rights, under the First Amendment.’

“So we need to stop this fiction that major mainstream legacy news media are special and instead start applying the law, including campaign finance law, to them as well as everybody else,” he added. 

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.