Giant Baby Brendan Carr Is Very Upset That ABC Is Fighting Back

from the thin-skinned-babies-of-a-feather dept

Earlier this week we noted how ABC has been asking its audience to give the Trump FCC an earful about its clumsy efforts to censor journalists, comedians, and daytime talk show hosts:

The ad only hints at the fact that FCC boss Brendan Carr has launched a fake “investigation” of ABC because The View hosted Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico last February. As we’ve explored repeatedly, Carr is pretending that this appearance violates a dated and irrelevant FCC “equal time rule,” despite the fact the show has had a formal exemption since 2002.

It’s all weird, performative bullshit designed to chill speech and punish ABC because President Trump is a thin-skinned autocrat. It’s also intended to send a message to all major media outlets that if they platform people openly critical of our dim kakistocracy, they’ll be inundated with endless costly legal headaches and bad “press” (read: lots of hostility aimed at them by right wing propaganda outlets).

Despite the ABC ad being relatively timid, it clearly upset the similarly-thin-skinned Carr, who took to Elon Musk’s right wing propaganda website to whine about it:

Again, The View was already exempt from this rule, for more than two decades. Even if it wasn’t, the rule hasn’t been enforced in 26 years because it’s a relic that doesn’t matter. It was crafted for an era where a TV appearance could make or break a political candidacy, requiring that a politician of the opposite party ideology get “equal time” on broadcast airwaves.

But broadcast is increasingly irrelevant, as is the rule, which you’ll notice Carr doesn’t enforce for right wing radio (because this is an ideological crusade by a weak zealot). This is also a giant loser of a case on First Amendment grounds. But it could be a particularly problematic case for Carr during discovery, given the indications that Carr covertly worked with right wing broadcasters to falsely make it look like ABC’s affiliate actively broke the law by not filling out some paperwork.

Carr knows all of this but his audience of bots and MAGA zealots over at ex-Twitter obviously don’t. They will simply see women daytime TV hosts and “news” in the same line of sight and immediately suffer embolisms of hate.

“Some may dislike certain — or even most — of the viewpoints expressed on ‘The View’ or similar shows,” ABC said in one recent filing. “Such dislike, however, cannot justify using regulatory processes to restrict those views.”

Carr doesn’t want this to ever see an actual courtroom. He just wants to intimidate corporate media giants, censor valid speech, and then bask in the adoration of the misinformed and deluded.

But it’s genuinely bad news for Carr and Trump that Disney Corporation is fighting back. If they can openly and legally demonstrate that Carr is a toothless extremist hack, other corporations are likely to be encouraged. And as Trump’s health and political power starts to buckle and fail, that sort of uncharacteristic corporate media courage could prove contagious.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, brendan carr, censorship, equal time rule, fcc, free speech, james talarico, journalism, media, the view

Companies: abc, disney