At its June 25 meeting, the Federal Communications Commission pressed a review that could put the broadcast licenses of Disney's ABC stations at risk, built on an investigation into the network's diversity practices and prompted, in part, by a daytime talk show. Chairman Brendan Carr's target is "The View." Commissioner Anna Gomez called the premise a fraud: "This whole diversity, equity, inclusion investigation is a pretext. The FCC is not the EEOC. We are bound by the Communications Act." [1]

The paper's June 30 note that broadcast outrage is worth reading only once it becomes a filing applies cleanly here, because the filings say something sharper than the shouting. The proceeding has drawn some 44,000 public comments, and Gomez expects the agency to "cherry-pick the submissions of partisan organizations," pointing to filings from two Republican congressional campaign committees in a docket ostensibly about a talk show. [1]

Beneath the culture-war framing sits a genuine legal claim, and it belongs to Carr. "Broadcast licenses are not property rights," he told reporters. "If there's nothing you can ever do to lose a broadcast license, it's not a license, it's a property right." [1] That is the real record: a theory of the license under which a renewal becomes contingent on the content a network airs. Disney's own filing argues the commission has never articulated a clear equal-opportunity standard and that denying renewals would be disproportionate. [1]

The quieter fight may matter more. Paramount Skydance's roughly $111 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery would place CNN, HBO Max and the Warner studios under one owner, and Paramount has disclosed that foreign investors would hold about 49.5 percent of the combined company — including some 38.5 percent from the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. [2] Carr says he is running the standard "Team Telecom" national-security review and calls foreign ownership "not necessarily a novel thing." Gomez wants the deal's closing halted. [2] Paramount, meanwhile, declined in mid-June to air a Freedom of the Press Foundation advertisement criticizing its leadership, citing a conflict of interest. [3]

This is the divergence. On X, both sides read censorship: the right cheers a regulator finally disciplining a biased network; the left sees the state dictating editorial choices. The filed record is drier and larger. It is a doctrine about whether a license is property, and a question about who — and which governments — may own the American airwaves. The talk show is the pretext. The license is the story.

-- MAYA CALLOWAY, New York