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FCC chair warns media not to run the "fake polls" Trump keeps complaining about
Ex-FCC chairs say Brendan Carr aims to scare broadcasters into self-censorship.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr today warned broadcasters about airing “fake polls,” amplifying one of the many complaints that President Trump has regularly made about the news media.
Carr’s post on X said, “Many journalists and broadcasters have been amplifying or airing these Polls without regard to basic journalistic ethics and without informing the public that those Polls lack a scientific, accurate, or even real basis… Broadcasters are advised to avoid engaging in News Distortions or running Broadcast Hoaxes by airing Polls that would violate their regulatory obligations.”
Carr urged broadcasters to “provide their viewers with additional context and information about Polls they have covered.” In fact, one small polling outfit was exposed as a hoax this week, and a similar incident occurred in August. News outlets have reported on these hoaxes, providing the very “context” that Carr said is needed.
Carr’s post did not mention any specific fake polls or any specific broadcasters that aired them. The vagueness of Carr’s post may be useful for his and Trump’s ongoing battle against the news media. In August, Trump demanded that the FCC punish or rebuke an NBC journalist for saying he has “mixed results” in election endorsements, and wrote that the FCC must do something about “THE FAKE POLLS USED BY OUR CROOKED MEDIA.”
Carr’s latest warning to broadcasters came as no surprise, given that he has spent much of the past two years threatening broadcast licenses and opening investigations into Trump’s least favorite news companies. Former Republican and Democratic FCC chairs and commissioners recently said Carr is seeking to censor and chill the speech of broadcasters through a proceeding that threatens the licenses of ABC-owned stations.
“FCC Chair Brendan Carr’s threat against broadcasters over their reporting on political polls is yet another truly outrageous attempt to censor and control the information available to Americans as they prepare to vote… Carr is now seizing on reports about fabricated political polling as an excuse to once again try to scare broadcasters into self-censorship,” said a statement today from a group of former FCC chairs and officials.
Today’s statement was attributed to former Chairman Tom Wheeler, a Democrat; former Chairman Mark Fowler, a Republican; and seven former high-ranking FCC officials. “Good-faith reporting on public polls—even ones that turn out to be made up—is not a violation of the FCC’s news distortion or hoax rules. And the FCC has zero authority to dictate editorial decisions,” they said.
Wheeler, Fowler, and others previously signed a letter objecting to the ABC investigation. The letter called it “the latest attack in a sustained campaign by Chairman Carr and the Trump administration of threatening legal sanctions against licensees whose speech President Trump dislikes.”
Anna Gomez, the only Democratic commissioner on the current FCC, wrote today that “Pollsters who intentionally mislead the public should answer for it, but broadcasters who report publicly available polling data should never be punished when a poll is wrong. FCC rules on news distortion or hoaxes do not apply to a station that reports this data in good faith.”