First Amendment

Brendan Carr Says He Can Police TV Journalism Because Broadcast Licenses Are 'Free'

The FCC chairman's reasoning is faulty.

Jacob Sullum | 3.16.2026 5:40 PM

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(Andrew Thomas/CNP/Polaris/Newscom)

For nearly a decade, President Donald Trump has been threatening to revoke the broadcast licenses of TV stations that fail to cover him the way he thinks they should. Ajit Pai, who chaired the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) during Trump's first term, was not at all receptive to that idea, saying, "I believe in the First Amendment." But Brendan Carr, the current FCC chairman, has no such constitutional compunctions.

Carr made that clear once again over the weekend, when he warned on X that broadcasters "will lose their licenses" if they fail to "operate in the public interest"—a standard that he seems to think constrains their coverage of the U.S. war with Iran. Carr's threat underlines the anomalous legal status of broadcast journalism, which allows government interference that would be obviously unconstitutional in any other medium.

Notably, Carr's X post was a response to Trump's complaints about a story in The Wall Street Journal, and the FCC has no authority to regulate newspapers. Trump, in turn, responded to Carr's threat with a broad attack on the "Fake News Media," reiterating his longstanding beef with journalists whose work irritates him. Although the Journal was the only outlet that Trump mentioned in that Truth Social post, he said he was "thrilled" that Carr was "looking at the licenses of some of these Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic 'News' Organizations"—i.e., the ones that are subject to FCC regulation.

Such meddling is justified, Trump said, because TV stations "get Billions of Dollars of FREE American Airwaves." He was echoing Carr's rationale for punishing news outlets that do not serve "the public interest" as Carr defines it: "The American people have subsidized broadcasters to the tune of billions of dollars by providing free access to the nation's airwaves." But that claim is inaccurate because the value of broadcast licenses is reflected in the price that businesses pay when they buy TV or radio stations.

NBC, for example, was originally a radio network established in 1926 by RCA, a partnership of General Electric (G.E.), Westinghouse, AT&T, and the United Fruit Company. RCA became a separate company in 1932 as a result of an antitrust settlement. G.E. regained control of NBC in 1986, when it bought RCA for $8.6 billion (about $25 billion in current dollars). In 2004, Vivendi Universal Entertainment merged with G.E., forming NBCUniversal. Comcast bought 51 percent of NBCUniversal in 2011, when the latter company........

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