The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday revived three complaints against NBC, ABC and CBS after a conservative group alleged multiple instances of bias against current President Donald Trump during the election season.
The three complaints were initially filed by a conservative nonprofit called the Center for American Rights. One accused ABC News of bias against former Vice President Kamala Harris fact-checking Trump during a presidential debate; another claimed that NBC then broke the equal-time rule Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance on “Saturday Night Live”; and the third accused CBS of deceptively editing Harris’ interview with “60 Minutes.”
CBS has defended the “60 Minutes” spoke to Harris and denied that it was misleadingly edited. NBC has filed equal time notice with the FCC to correct Harris’ airtime, and the network later gave Trump two minutes of free air. And ABC rejected claims that the network had given Harris an unfair advantage.
The FCC Chairman under Joe Biden, Jessica Rosenworcel, rejected the complaints last week, in the final days of Biden’s term. She said the filings at the time had attempted “to weaponize the FCC’s licensing authority in a manner that is fundamentally inconsistent with the First Amendment.”
But FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Republican and Project 2025 employee who took over the agency this week after being selected by Trump, reversed that decision.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File
“Glad to see that our campaign for truth and transparency through the @FCC won’t be stopped by the previous chairman’s last-minute attempt to absolve the networks of liability,” said Daniel Suhr, president of the Center for American Rights . wrote on X.
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A fourth FCC complaint against a Fox television station, which Rosenworcel also dismissed, was not revived. That complaint argued that the station would lose its license for promoting lies and conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.
Carr criticized Harris’ “Saturday Night Live” performance when it happened. At the time, he argued that the surprise skit, just days before the November election, was a “clear and blatant attemptby the Harris campaign “to circumvent the FCC’s Equal Time rule,” which forces broadcasters to give equal airtime to political candidates.
“The purpose of the rule is to avoid exactly this type of biased and partisan behavior — a licensed broadcaster using the public airwaves to exert its influence on one candidate on the eve of an election,” he wrote.