Brendan Carr’s FCC is an anti-consumer, rights-trampling harassment machine
- The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has undergone a significant transformation under Chairman Brendan Carr, shifting from a media and telecom watchdog to an anti-consumer rights-trampling agency.
- The new FCC prioritizes protecting President Donald J. Trump’s ego over consumer interests, often through publicity-seeking pseudo-investigations that disregard factual reality or the law.
- Under Carr’s leadership, the FCC has harassed journalists, bullied media companies into self-censorship, and coerced telecom giants to conform to administration policies.
- The agency’s focus on Trumpism has led to a decline in its attention to important issues like broadband map accuracy, media consolidation, and next-generation broadband deployment.
- Media and telecom policy experts have criticized Carr’s actions as an abuse of agency authority, citing the Chair’s willingness to disregard laws and regulations in pursuit of political goals.
In less than 100 days the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been converted from a media and telecom watchdog into a bizarre, rights-trampling grievance machine built for one purpose: to coddle and protect the ego of President Donald J. Trump.
Gone is the agency that used to occasionally care about whether broadband maps were accurate or if consumers are being ripped off by sneaky cable industry fees. Gone is the agency that sometimes cared about media consolidation, or had begun taking a closer look at decades of discrimination in next-generation broadband deployment.
In its place is an FCC custom-built to harass companies and organizations that fail to support Trumpism, usually via a rotating crop of publicity-seeking pseudo-investigations that often have a fleeting relationship to factual reality or the law.
Media and telecom policy experts have been taken aback by the quick transformation under Chairman Brendan Carr, who they say has abused agency authority and the law to harass journalists, cajole insufficiently deferential media companies, and bully telecom giants into taking an obedient knee to the administration.
“I have been shocked at the lengths that the Chairm …
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