Until recently, the Federal Communications Commission was not an agency that many Americans typically spent much time thinking about. That’s changed in President Donald Trump’s second term under FCC Chair Brendan Carr. A telecom lawyer by trade who has risen up the ranks of the agency over the years, Carr has developed a strong relationship with Trump and gleefully taken on the president’s enemies in the media in a bid to bring them to heel. While touring his office after our interview for The Conversation, Carr showed me a mug on his desk with an image depicting him as Trump’s pit bull taking on the media. Carr’s persistent threats to pull broadcasters’ licenses, his spats with Jimmy Kimmel and The View, and his overall aggressive posture has raised alarm in the press and on both sides of the aisle. Even conservative Republicans have expressed concerns about the precedent that Carr is setting and the potential chilling effects on speech. But Carr doesn’t see it that way. “It’s not our role to be the speech police,” he said. “It’s not our role to fundamentally transform editorial decisions, but there is a baseline level of regulation that Congress wanted. I think that is our job.” Carr also refused to say it would be inappropriate for Trump to direct the FCC to investigate certain broadcasters or that there should be any limits on Trump using the FCC against media companies he doesn’t like. “The president has every right in the world,” he said, “to push back on media.” This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Listen here for the full conversation.Republicans, yourself very much included, have historically stood for deregulation and limited government intervention, especially when it comes to speech. But the FCC is now playing a much more active role when it comes to broadcasters, news and editorial decisions. How do you square that? The way I think about it is it’s really a blend of two different strains of approaches to this job. On the one hand, we do have a very aggressive, what you would describe as a traditional, deregulatory agenda. We have an entire proceeding called “Delete, Delete, Delete.” We’ve deleted over 2000 regulations from the FCC’s books at this point. At the same time, we are appropriately adopting regulations, and you see that most notably in the media policy sector. I think that does reflect a… [TheTopNews] Read More.
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