Wheeler, Other Advocates Urge Pai to 'Publicly Refuse' to Consider Broadcasting License Challenges From Trump
Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and two other former commissioners joined 18 officials from public interest and civil liberties groups Friday to urge FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to publicly condemn President Donald Trump’s recent tweets and comments in which he…
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threatened to challenge NBC licenses over the network's reporting on his administration's activities. Congressional Democrats condemned Trump’s comments about the licenses as a potential threat to the freedom of the press. Top House Commerce Democrats are asking Pai and other FCC commissioners to “disavow” Trump’s comments during a committee hearing (see 1710110075 and 1710120028). “We’re writing to urge you to uphold the First Amendment and to publicly refuse to entertain any broadcast-license challenges on the basis of the president’s disapproval of a network’s news coverage,” said Wheeler and other advocates in a letter to Pai. “Coming from a president who has repeatedly referred to the news media as the ‘enemy of the American people,’ these tweets continue a disturbing pattern in this administration to undercut vital press freedoms.” The threats “are what you would expect to hear in a dictatorship, not a democracy, and they must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.” Others who signed the letter include former Commissioners Michael Copps and Gloria Tristani, Free Press President Craig Aaron and National Hispanic Media Coalition President Alex Nogales. The FCC didn’t comment. Wheeler separately criticized Pai and Republican commissioners Brendan Carr and Michael O’Rielly in a Brookings Institution blog post for their “silence” on Trump’s tweets. “Normally, they will tweet at the drop of a hat,” Wheeler said. “Have they lost their Twitter handles?” The GOP commissioners’ lack of comment means they “have joined in the president’s strategy to get into the head of every television station news editor and station manager in the country,” Wheeler said. “If, because the FCC failed to make clear that the government can’t bully them, even one broadcaster thinks twice about a story and its effect on their license, then the Constitution has been abridged and the FCC is complicit.”