The Federal Communications Commission revived three complaint against NBC, ABC and CBS on Wednesday, after a conservative group alleged multiple instances of bias against now-President Donald Trump during the election season.
The three complaints were initially filed by a conservative nonprofit group called the Center for American Rights. One accused ABC News of bias towards former Vice President Kamala Harris for fact-checking Trump during a presidential debate; another claimed NBC had violated the equal time rule when 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” sit-down with Harris and denied that it had been edited misleadingly. NBC filed an equal time notice with the FCC to rectify Harris’ air time, 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 chair under Joe Biden, Jessica Rosenworcel, dismissed the complaints last week, in the final days of Biden’s term. She said at the time the filings had sought to “weaponize the licensing authority of the FCC in a way that is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment.”
But FCC Chair Brendan Carr, a Republican and Project 2025 contributor 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 prior chair’s last minute attempt to excuse the networks from accountability,” Daniel Suhr, president of the Center for American Rights, wrote on X.
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A fourth FCC complaint against a Fox-owned television station that Rosenworcel had also dismissed was not revived. That complaint had argued the station should lose its license for promoting lies and conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.
Carr criticized Harris’ “Saturday Night Live” appearance when it happened. At the time, he argued the surprise skit, just days before the November election, was a “clear and blatant effort” by the Harris campaign “to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule,” which forces broadcasters to give the same airtime to political candidates.
“The purpose of the rule is to avoid exactly this type of biased and partisan conduct — a licensed broadcaster using the public airwaves to exert its influence for one candidate on the eve of an election,” he wrote.
