Head of FCC Rejects Donald Trump’s Call to Revoke ABC Broadcast License
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has officially rejected a call by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to “take away” the government’s broadcast license from ABC, after Trump was angry about his treatment from ABC News’ moderators in his Sept. 10 debate with VP Kamala Harris.
The morning after the debate, Trump called in to Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” to accuse moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis of unfairly fact-checking his arguments while not doing the same for Harris. Trump said the “rigged” debate was “3-to-1” and said government regulators “ought to take away” ABC’s “license for the way they did that.”
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Regarding Trump’s demand that ABC lose its license, Rosenworcel said in a letter to Sens. Democratic Sens. Ed Markey and Ron Wyden, “The First Amendment is a cornerstone of our democracy. The Commission does not revoke licenses for broadcast stations simply because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes content or coverage. Our job at the agency is to license broadcast stations in a manner consistent with the Constitution and the Communications Act of 1934 as well as the rules and policies we have adopted pursuant to these laws. There are no exceptions.”
Rosenworcel was responding to a request by Markey and Wyden, which was sent to all five FCC commissioners, requesting them to “make licensing determinations objectively and in a manner that upholds the First Amendment.”
Ratings for the Harris-Trump debate were strong, with 67.135 million viewers tuning in via multiple networks, led by ABC News, which handled the debate. The viewership number was up 31% from the 51.266 million who tuned in to Trump’s debate with president Joe Biden, hosted by CNN, in June, before the latter dropped out to endorse Harris.
The Harris campaign has said “We owe it to the voters to have another debate” but last week Trump insisted that he would not participate in a second debate with the VP.
In 2017, Trump raged against NBC News, tweeting that it its coverage “so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!” Ajit Pai, the Trump-appointed chair of the FCC at the time, said shortly afterward that the agency “under the law does not have the authority to revoke the license of a broadcast station based on the content of a particular newscast.”
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