Summary
The FCC, now chaired by Trump appointee Brendan Carr, has reinstated complaints against ABC, CBS, and NBC over alleged bias in their 2024 election coverage, including ABC’s debate moderation and Kamala Harris’s appearances on CBS’s 60 Minutes and NBC’s Saturday Night Live.
Previously dismissed by former FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel for lack of evidence, the complaints will now be investigated.
Critics warn the move risks politicizing FCC authority and undermining press freedom.
Trump has also sued CBS over its Harris interview, alleging it was “misleading.”
I see the argument that if we let ABC, NBC and CBS fall, nobody is left is big enough to continue the fight.
But I would say they weren’t on our side in the fight this time anyway.
Do we give a fuck if Fonald Trump brings down Disney’s news division? Or GE/Comcast?
Donald Trump can go after any executive he wants as far as I am concerned. Let him focus on them so we can regroup without having the billionaires in control of our side as well.
If we let them fall, Fox and CNN will be the only real games in TV news.
TV news is dying anyway.
Do you really know anyone under the age of 50 who gets their news from television?
This is a nightmare. A very real step toward a fascist authoritarian dictatorship. Not not because of TV news. Because of what might happen to all other news outlets. He’s has the biggest social platforms bowing to him already.
That’s why it needs to he stopped. Not because of loosing a medium that’s dying anyway. But because he wants to control all news media. We can’t let him have any.
Absolutely.
To add to that, even though Trump complains about how the “mainstream media” treats him, in reality he has the actual mainstream media on his side (Joe Rogan, etc). Saw someone bring up a statistic the other day that pointed out that as far as audience reach: Kamala Harris would have had to appear on CNN, Fox, and MSNBC for 3 hours every night for two weeks, during prime time, to have the same reach Trump got from going on Joe Rogan.
Obviously that comparison is to cable channels rather than the broadcast channels the FCC has more authority to “investigate,” but the allegations of “unfairness” are entirely out of touch with modern reality.
To the best of my knowledge, only about 1% of Americans are watching Fox and CNN on any given night.
I would also say that Fox and CNN viewers tend to be the dumbest and least informed of all news watchers.
Americans have to rebuild our media and we are doing it from the ground up. It is terrifying but the best thing that can happen for the left is for Trump to do the job of the communists without having let them taken power in the process. If he wants to create a power vacuum for us socialists to fill before he realized what he did, fucking let him.
I have to boggle at that. Probably 2/5 of the people older than 60 that I know have fox news (with a brief surge of newsmax or whatever back in 2021) on constantly. I know I’ve lived in some bloody regions, but it can’t be such small number. My mind just boggles that I am somehow stuck so squarely in the midst of such fools when only 1% of americans have them on.
The statement was 1% of the US population is watching it on any given night. Some quick searching I found the most-watched cable news show is The Five from Fox News with 3.57M viewership.
335M people in the US, so that number is actually a bit greater than 1% of the entire US population.
335M * 24% * 64% = 51.5M
If the all their viewers are >60, then about 7% of all >60 people who care about politics could be watching that one Fox News show.
That’s not quite 2/5, but it’s still significant! And again, that accounts for only 1 show’s viewership. I couldn’t find easy numbers for how many people watch Fox News in a given day or week.
Sorry, you probably don’t care but your comment made me curious.
Oh, no. My comment history is littered with math like that. I’m swooning over here.
That’s all well and good until he starts rounding up socialists before that power vacuum can be filled. You can sure that there will be witch hunts and show trials. Trump’s too much of a Roy Cohn disciple not to use that standard totalitarian tactic.
At the bare minimum, if liberals started watching PBS for the nightly news, they would be better off.
Only 20% of public broadcasting budget is federally funded and they would need an act of congress to begin moderating content.
Which… the government does not produce the content nor do they own any of the radio stations. PRI & NPR are private companies who produce the content, and the stations, which are community owned, purchase the license to broadcast their content.
The public airwaves are already well protected against Trump and liberals need to get on them before they fall victim to the brainwashing.
I’d be perfectly happy if killing CBS causes libs to start watching Democracy Now.