from the fake-investigations-by-silly-fascists dept
There’s simply no limit of problems in telecom and media that competent FCC regulators could be taking aim at. Broadband price gouging by monopolies, widespread telecom privacy and security failures, the obvious harm of unchecked media consolidation all come quickly to mind.
Instead of tackling any of this, new Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr has spent the lion’s share of his first months in office engaged in erratic authoritarian zealotry, whether it’s abusing FCC authority to harass journalists who refuse to kiss Donald Trump’s ass, or “investigating” Verizon, Comcast, and Disney for not being racist enough.
Now Carr is again taking aim at Comcast, simply because journalists at MSNBC and NBC gave King Donald a sad.
Over at the right wing propaganda website known as X, Carr whined about Comcast over MSNBC and NBC’s coverage of Abrego Garcia, a Maryland dad the government “accidentally” kidnapped, sent to a foreign gulag, and now refuses to return to the U.S.
You’ll notice Carr isn’t actually launching any sort of actual “investigation” into Comcast here because the accusation is baseless bullshit.
There is no evidence that Garcia was a gang member. Garcia’s only arrest was in 2019 for “loitering” in a Home Depot parking lot. Carr is of course mad because NBC and MSNBC told people the truth: that the government fucked up, appear to have falsely and lazily identified a man as a gang member and dangerous career criminal, then “accidentally” shipped him off to a foreign work gulag.
Even if Garcia was a gang member, Brendan Carr is behaving like a foolish clown. The rule he’s trying to leverage here, the FCC’s “distortion rule,” is a very rarely enforced rule that says news outlets can’t suppress important journalism or take cash bribes to modify journalism. It clearly doesn’t apply if NBC and MSNBC were just explaining the situation accurately. And it doesn’t apply to cable news.
Carr, of course, knows this, he’s just hoping that a shitty U.S. press system will help him pretend he’s launching a “serious investigation,” so the accusations get repeated across the media and other news outlets think twice before criticizing Donald Trump. It doesn’t matter if NBC (or anybody else) is guilty, the press will dutifully parrot the accusation far and wide, implying guilt.
Because U.S. consolidated corporate journalism is generally very shitty and concerned about losing access or costly fake investigations, it’s an effective tactic.
If you search through the news wires, most of the reporting on this story parrot Carr’s claims without pointing out he doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on. Or that the rule in question doesn’t apply to cable. Or that Carr’s primary goal is very clearly to bully media companies and suppress journalism, a curious choice for a party that spent the last few years babbling endlessly about their love of free speech.
Again there will never be a case against Comcast here because this is thin bullshit and Carr has absolutely no leg to stand on. The whole point of the tweet was to get the press to parrot the false claims to a broader audience and to soften their criticism of the Trump administration. Most were happy to oblige.
Filed Under: abrego garcia, brendan carr, fcc, free speech, journalism, media, news distortion
Companies: comcast, msnbc, nbc
