On Saturday, March 14, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr posted a message on X informing American broadcasters that they had "a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up." [1] The offense requiring correction was their coverage of the war in Iran. The remedy on offer was their continued existence. "The law is clear," Carr wrote. "Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not." [1] It was not a legal analysis. It was a threat, issued on a social media platform, by the man who controls the renewal of every television and radio broadcast license in the United States.

This paper reported yesterday that the FCC had threatened broadcast licenses over war coverage, and that Friday's federal court ruling striking down the Pentagon's press credentialing regime represented the judicial front of the same campaign. Today the irony has sharpened. The Guardian published an opinion column whose headline requires no elaboration: "Trump's FCC chair wants American media to work like Iran's state TV." [2] The irony is not decorative. The United States is waging a war, in part, against a theocratic regime that controls its domestic press through licensing and intimidation. The FCC chairman is proposing to control the American press through licensing and intimidation.

There is no modern precedent. The FCC has never revoked a broadcast license over news coverage content. Not during Vietnam, not during Iraq, not during any military engagement of the past half-century. The "public interest" standard Carr invokes dates to the Communications Act of 1934 and has been interpreted by courts as a structural requirement — are you serving your community, are you operating within your allocation — not as a content-review mechanism for wartime journalism. [3]

What Carr Actually Said

The post arrived hours after President Trump accused networks of spreading "fake news" about the war, specifically disputing reports that Iranian missiles had struck five American tanker aircraft. [4] Carr's language tracked Trump's almost verbatim. He called the coverage "hoaxes and news distortions" and said broadcasters spreading them should understand the consequences. [1]

A second post followed in which Carr cited constitutional law: "No one has a First Amendment right to a license or to monopolize a radio frequency." [5] The citation is technically accurate — the Supreme Court said as much in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC in 1969 — but it proves less than Carr implies. Red Lion upheld the Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcasters to present contrasting viewpoints on controversial issues. The FCC itself abandoned the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, concluding that it violated the First Amendment by chilling speech. [3] Carr is invoking a doctrine his own agency repealed because it was too coercive, in support of a threat that is more coercive still.

NPR's David Folkenflik noted an additional absurdity: Trump's original complaints were directed at CNN and MSNBC, neither of which holds a broadcast license. [6] They are cable networks. The FCC does not license cable. Carr's threat, if carried through, would fall on local affiliate stations owned by companies like Nexstar and Tegna — stations that carry network programming but did not produce the coverage Trump found objectionable. The punishment, in other words, would land on the wrong targets, in the wrong medium, for the wrong reason. This is not a flaw in the strategy. The imprecision is the strategy. The goal is not revocation. The goal is the chill.

The Chill, Not the Action

The structural advantage of Carr's approach is that a threat does not produce a plaintiff. No license has been revoked. No broadcaster has standing to sue. The chill operates precisely because the action has not been taken. Last Friday, Judge Paul Friedman struck down the Pentagon's parallel press credentialing regime as unconstitutional on First and Fifth Amendment grounds. [7] That mechanism is now dead. Carr's mechanism remains untested in court because it has not been exercised — only displayed.

Democrats on the Commerce Committee called Carr's posts "a blatant attempt to weaponize government power against the free press during wartime." [4] The Guardian reported that Carr's threats amounted to an attempt to "throttle news broadcasts" over coverage the administration deemed unfavorable. [8] The LA Times reported that legal experts across the political spectrum consider actual license revocation over news content virtually impossible under current law — which is exactly why the threat works. [9] It does not need to be legally viable. It needs to be believed.

The State TV Comparison

The Guardian's Margaret Sullivan made the comparison explicit. Carr, she wrote, "is using the same playbook against news outlets over their Iran war coverage because it's worked before. And it will continue to work until someone stops it." [2] The administration is waging a war to confront, among other stated aims, a regime that suppresses press freedom through regulatory control. The FCC chairman is proposing to suppress press freedom through regulatory control. The war is against a country that tells its broadcasters what they may say about the war. The FCC chairman is telling American broadcasters what they may say about the war.

No modern FCC chairman has done this. That is not because no modern FCC chairman thought of it. It is because every modern FCC chairman understood that the power to license is not the power to censor, and that conflating the two is the defining act of the press regimes America claims to oppose.

-- CHARLES ASHFORD, London