How the FCC's 'Warrior for Free Speech' Became Our Censor in Chief
Brendan Carr has a clear record of threatening to suppress constitutionally protected speech.
When Donald Trump announced the appointment of Brendan Carr to the top spot at the Federal Communications Commission, he called Carr "a warrior for Free Speech." Carr, in turn, pledged to "dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans." But Carr's statements and actions both before and since taking on his new role indicate someone all too comfortable wielding government power against media companies for politically disfavored speech.
"I think he's the most anti–free speech FCC chair that we've had, as long as I can remember," says Techdirt founder Mike Masnick. "And I think that's a little terrifying, especially as he is presented by himself, Donald Trump, and the media as being a free speech warrior….Yet, over and over again, we see that he's constantly trying to attack and suppress and punish speech."
Big Tech Crackdown
Consider Carr's November 2024 letter to the CEOs of Alphabet (which owns Google and YouTube), Apple, Meta (which owns Facebook), and Microsoft. "Americans have lived through an unprecedented surge in censorship," Carr wrote. He deemed these companies part of a "censorship cartel" that had "silenced Americans for doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights."
Some social media companies did indeed work with the Biden administration to suppress online speech. But Carr did not ask about their acquiescence to government censorship requests: "I am writing to obtain information about your work with one specific organization—the Orwellian named NewsGuard." He wanted this information "to help inform FCC action."
NewsGuard is a private company that employs journalists to rate the accuracy and reliability of news outlets on a scale of 0–100. (It gave Reason a perfect score "for the highest adherence to journalistic practice.") It markets the service to advertisers, but users can also download software that displays the ratings in their web browser. In his letter, Carr added that NewsGuard "has partnered with social media companies."
NewsGuard is "part of the broader censorship cartel," Carr wrote, "leveraging its partnerships with advertising agencies to effectively censors [sic] targeted outlets." On X, Carr later wrote that NewsGuard "operates for the purpose of censoring viewpoints that fall outside an approved narrative. Its conduct has also led to collusive ad boycotts, which may violate antitrust and competition laws."
Carr's argument was premised on a mistaken understanding of both the target company's practices and the First Amendment. "Neither of the social media companies (Alphabet and Meta) to which you wrote work with us at all," NewsGuard cofounders and co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz wrote in reply. Further, they added, "Our work does not involve any censorship or blocking of speech."
More to the point, NewsGuard's rating of news outlets, and a tech company's decision to allow their software into its app store, are completely within the bounds of protected speech. Even openly calling for advertiser boycotts would be well within a speaker's rights. Unless government coercion is involved either explicitly or implicitly, it's not an act of censorship that violates the First Amendment.
Carr's letter also targeted tech companies by threatening to revoke legal liability protections enshrined in federal law. Section 230 of the Communications Act establishes that websites cannot be held civilly liable for content posted by others, nor for actions "voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access" to content they find "objectionable."
But in his letter, Carr cited the law to threaten the tech CEOs. "As you know, Big Tech's prized liability shield, Section 230, is codified in the Communications Act, which the FCC administers," he wrote. "As relevant here, Section 230 only confers benefits on Big Tech companies when they operate, in the words of the statute, 'in good faith'….But NewsGuard's own track record raises questions about whether relying on the organization's products would constitute 'good faith' actions within the meaning of Section 230." He later added: "Any tech company that continues to rely on NewsGuard is putting its Section 230 protections in serious jeopardy."
Carr gets it backward: Section 230 does not require "good faith" as a prerequisite for liability protection. Rather, it states that websites bear no civil liability for things that others post, nor for moderation decisions made "in good faith." They don't forfeit these protections simply by doing one of these the wrong way.
Carr also penned a chapter about the FCC for the Heritage Foundation's Mandate for Leadership, popularly known as Project 2025. Under the section "Reining In Big Tech," Carr wrote, "The FCC should issue an order that interprets Section 230 in a way that eliminates the expansive, non-textual immunities that courts have read into the statute" and "remind courts how the various portions of Section 230 operate." Specifically, Carr said the FCC should "clarify" the interpretation of the statute to "appropriately limit the number of cases in which a platform can censor with the benefit of Section 230's protections."
Carr's interpretation doesn't hold up. "Section 230 itself contains no mention of FCC rulemaking authority to define the bounds of the immunity it provides," Lawrence J. Spiwak wrote in November for the Federalist Society. "Section 230, on its face, simply appears to provide digital platforms with an affirmative defense in the case of civil litigation."
Carr cited an October 2020 memo by FCC then-General Counsel Thomas Johnson Jr. to say the FCC does have the authority to interpret Section 230. That authority, Johnson argued, "derived from the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., that 'Congress is well aware that the ambiguities it chooses to produce in a statute will be resolved by the implementing agency.'"
But Johnson's memo was released just two weeks before the 2020 election, and his theory was never put into practice. Besides, the Supreme Court notably overturned Chevron last year in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, foreclosing the ability of the FCC or any other agency to "clarify" or "interpret" a statute on its own. "The message of Loper Bright to the FCC is clear," Spiwak wrote, "regardless of your political desires, interpreting Section 230 is not your job."
Broadcast Badgering
Carr has also followed Trump's lead in threatening broadcast television networks for protected speech.
In September, Trump participated in a televised presidential debate against his Democratic rival, then–Vice President Kamala Harris, on ABC. Network moderators fact-checked some of his statements. In response, Trump grumbled: "They're a news organization. They have to be licensed to do it. [The FCC] ought to take away their license for the way they did that."
Similarly, when 60 Minutes interviewed Harris in October, CBS aired two different versions of one of her answers: a clipped version in the primetime broadcast and a longer version on the Sunday morning show Face the Nation.
Trump then complained that CBS had "sliced and diced" her answer for the primetime broadcast "to make her look 'more Presidential.'" He said the edit "must be investigated, starting today" and added that the FCC should "TAKE AWAY THE CBS LICENSE."
Then, days before the election, Harris briefly appeared on NBC's Saturday Night Live, triggering an FCC rule that if a candidate for public office appears on broadcast TV, the network must offer equal time under similar terms to any opposing candidate who requests it.
One problem with Trump's demand? The major networks do not have FCC licenses of their own. Rather, their many local affiliates do.
Nevertheless, the Center for American Rights, a conservative nonprofit, filed FCC complaints against ABC and CBS affiliates for "news distortion," and against an NBC affiliate for violating the equal time rule, asking the agency to investigate and intervene.
In January 2025, outgoing FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel dismissed all three complaints. "The incoming President has called on the Federal Communications Commission to revoke licenses for broadcast television stations because he disagrees with their content and coverage," she wrote. "The action we take makes clear two things. First, the FCC should not be the President's speech police. Second, the FCC should not be journalism's censor-in-chief."
But days after Carr took charge, the FCC reinstated the complaints against ABC, NBC, and CBS, noting that each dismissal was "issued prematurely based on an insufficient investigatory record for the station-specific conduct at issue."
Notably, Rosenworcel had also dismissed a complaint from the left-leaning Media and Democracy Project asking the FCC to punish Fox News Channel for airing "knowingly false narratives about the 2020 election" by potentially revoking a Philadelphia FOX affiliate's broadcast license. Rosenworcel wrote that the complaint "seeks to have the FCC remove the license of a television station for the character shortcomings of its corporate ownership" and dismissed it at the same time as the other three.
Under Carr, the agency revived the complaints against ABC, NBC, and CBS but left the FOX complaint dismissed. In a statement, the Media and Democracy Project called the act "a form of intimidation and corruption."
Reinstating the complaints only against networks Trump finds disfavorable "seems like another example of [Carr] making decisions and doling out potential punishment based on ideological views and speech," Masnick, the Techdirt founder, says. "And that seems very anti–First Amendment and anti–free speech…but certainly part of the pattern of what we've seen from Carr."
Even before assuming his new position, Carr was critical of the three major broadcast networks. In July 2024, entertainment conglomerate Paramount Global agreed to an $8 billion merger with production company Skydance Media. Since Paramount owns CBS, plus 14 of its affiliate stations, any sale or merger would involve the transfer of broadcast licenses, giving the FCC authority over whether the deal can move forward—specifically, if the deal would benefit "the public interest, convenience, and necessity."
Carr has signaled that he won't make it easy on them. "There's…a news distortion complaint at the FCC still, having to do with CBS, and CBS has a transaction before the FCC," Carr told Fox News' Dana Perino in November. "I'm pretty confident that that news distortion complaint over the CBS 60 Minutes transcript is something that's likely to arise in the context of the FCC's review of that transaction."
Carr deemed Harris' Saturday Night Live cameo "a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC's Equal Time rule" and "us[e] the public airwaves to exert its influence for one candidate on the eve of an election…unless the broadcaster offered Equal Time to other qualifying campaigns." NBC filed a notice with the FCC the following day, saying Harris "appeared without charge…for a total period of 1 minute and 30 seconds," and to compensate, it aired a Trump ad twice for free.
But Carr went even further, telling Fox News' Maria Bartiromo, "We need to keep every single remedy on the table. One of the remedies the FCC has, ultimately, would be license revocation if we find that it's egregious," because a punishment "needs to deter this kind of conduct."
And in December, Carr sent a letter to the CEO of Disney, which owns ABC. While nominally addressing Disney's ongoing contract negotiations with some ABC affiliates, the letter's tone was decidedly threatening.
"Americans no longer trust the national news media to report fully, accurately, and fairly," Carr began. "ABC's own conduct has certainly contributed to this erosion in public trust." To illustrate the point, he cited the network's recent decision to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Trump. "Americans largely hold positive views of their local media outlets," he added, whereas "so many Americans no longer trust…the national news media and programmers" like ABC.
"The approach that ABC is apparently taking in [affiliate] negotiations concerns me," Carr warned. "I will be monitoring the outcome of your ongoing discussions," and "the FCC will be compelled to act" if he finds the outcome unsatisfactory. (At the end of December, Gray Television announced it had renewed all its affiliate agreements with ABC across 25 markets.)
"To whatever extent the FCC has legitimate interests in those negotiations—and if it does, it's a small one—that really wasn't the point of the letter," says Ari Cohn, lead counsel for tech policy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). "The threat is, if you say things that I don't like or that I think will anger the president of the United States who appointed me, then I'm going to exercise whatever rights that I have as FCC chair and wield the power of this agency to hassle you in other ways."
Indeed, Carr's conduct indicates someone willing to use his power in government to benefit his political allies—chief among them, the president who appointed him.
Days before the 2024 election, Trump personally sued CBS over the 60 Minutes interview. He claimed the edit of Harris' answer constituted consumer fraud and requested $10 billion in damages.
Given that he won the election, it's hard to imagine Trump suffered much actual damage. And the Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that editorial decisions are covered by the First Amendment: "For better or worse, editing is what editors are for; and editing is selection and choice of material," the Court wrote in Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. v. Democratic National Committee. "That editors—newspaper or broadcast—can and do abuse this power is beyond doubt, but that is no reason to deny the discretion Congress provided."
Yet just days into Trump's second term, The New York Times reported that CBS would likely settle, as executives "believe that settling the lawsuit would increase the odds that the Trump administration does not block or delay their planned multibillion-dollar merger." The Wall Street Journal had previously reported, "It's become clear to executives" that "they'll likely need to offer concessions to win [Trump's] approval," and that Carr "gave Paramount executives a warning to that effect at a reception late last year."
In January, as part of its review of the Paramount/Skydance merger, the FCC also demanded "[a] full, unedited transcript and camera feeds" of the October interview, which CBS agreed to provide.
"CBS News executives were already discussing releasing a full transcript of the interview with Kamala Harris before the FCC inquiry," the Los Angeles Times reported. "But they saw that as a dangerous precedent because raw transcripts of edited interviews are typically only released to address issues related to possible defamation."
Carr says a transcript is necessary because of the reinstated complaint. "I don't see how the FCC can reasonably adjudicate this claim of news distortion without seeing what was actually said," he told CNN.
Carr's defenders argue this is a legitimate inquiry. "I think it's fair to ask questions about things like that, especially when a company like CBS is in the process of being acquired," says Nathan Leamer, CEO of Fixed Gear Strategies, who previously worked with Carr at the FCC and still considers him a friend. "They have to get authorization from the FCC, and a lot of times the chairman and the commissioners use the opportunity to ask probing questions about the public interest."
As to the edit, Leamer says it's worth asking, "Are these decisions journalistic editorial decisions, or are they decisions being sent down from the corporate leadership structure?"
Yet Carr himself has also demonstrated that he understands all too well the power governments can wield against broadcasters, and how dangerous federal inquiries can be.
When conservative cable channels aired Trump's erroneous claims about fraud in the 2020 election, then-Reps. Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney (D–Calif.) demanded to know why cable and satellite companies had "done nothing in response to the misinformation aired by these outlets."
Carr's response was unsparing. "This is a chilling transgression of the free speech rights that every media outlet in this country enjoys," he wrote in response. "A newsroom's decision about what stories to cover and how to frame them should be beyond the reach of any government official, not targeted by them. To the House Democrats that used their official letterhead to launch this inquiry, I would say this: Your demand to know the 'moral principles' that guide a private entity's decision about what news to carry cannot be reconciled with bedrock principles of free speech and journalistic freedom."
Yet Carr has been no stranger to issuing threats, on his official letterhead, against newsrooms or companies engaged in protected speech of their own. The only difference is that in this case, it's speech he doesn't like.
