> Broadcasters have a license from the government to use the airwaves and they are obligated to act in the public interest. So some restrictions apply to them.

Necessarily.

Carr threatened to revoke licenses based on the political speech of ABC. That's clearly unconstitutional. Trump followed up by saying licenses should be revoked for criticism of himself. Unitary President cuts both ways.

If this is okay, the next Democrat who's President needs to shut down Fox News and their ilk or be impeached. (From the perspective of fomenting rebellion and generally posing a threat to our republic, Jimmy Kimmel isn't even on the list.)

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yannyu 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Fox News is technically cable, as the other poster under you has noted, which is a favored defense for this sort of discussion.

What they ignore is that local Fox affiliate stations who are also licensed by the FCC have a history of aligning with Fox News misinformation campaigns relating to covid, election integrity, Russia and Ukraine, Palestine, etc.

So no, the FCC licensed world is not left leaning, and these local affiliate stations should absolutely be held to the same standard.

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billfor 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Fox news doesn't have a broadcast license. ABC does. As with redistricting, democrats are limited because things are already biased in their favor. Broadcast networks are all center-left at this point, if not then show me one major broadcaster that is center right. Democrats basically have nobody to go after.

To your point, The Democrats, when back in power, could extend licensing issues into cableTV, etc... and attempt to fire Fox or Newsmax commentators... I would argue the Biden administration already attempted to do a form of this, as we saw with Facebook, Twitter, et al, the last administration certainly tried influencing the online arena.

I just think both sides do it, although on this forum it seems to trigger mostly the left side.

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kenjackson 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Fox News doesn’t have a broadcast license but Fox Broadcasting does. If people are doing this sort of extortion, it wouldn’t be a leap to see the whole Fox corporation in the crosshairs. This is all just a terrible precedent for what the future holds.

	▲	SauciestGNU 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Except non-NewsCorp Fox assets were bought by none other than Disney! It's a gordian knot of monopolistic corruption!

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JumpCrisscross 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> would argue the Biden administration already attempted to do a form of this, as we saw with Facebook, Twitter, et al, the last administration certainly tried influencing the online arena

Not comparable. That said, I agree—if this precedent stands, there should be personal liability for Newsmax commenters under a future administration. (And, of course, they should be barred from federal property.)

One would also go after the online streaming companies to delist their content. Google and Meta are constantly under antitrust controlled. TikTok is government owned. And you could start knocking on X with its money-transfer ambitions and Elon’s robotaxi approvals (to say nothing of federal contracts).