FCC Chair Brendan Carr targets news outlets

March 14, 2026 | FCC chair threatens licenses of broadcasters for Iran war coverage

March 14, 2026 | FCC chair threatens licenses of broadcasters for Iran war coverage

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr on March 14, 2026, threatened broadcasters with the loss of their licenses for what he characterized as “running hoaxes and news distortions” in their accounts of U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.

In a social media post, Carr quoted a screenshot of a Truth Social post from President Donald Trump, in which the president alleged that The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and “other Lowlife ‘Papers’ and Media” want the U.S. to lose the war with Iran.

Although Trump did not mention any TV news outlets by name, Carr noted, “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.” The FCC chair then added that those broadcasters “have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up.”

“The American people have subsidized broadcasters to the tune of billions of dollars by providing free access to the nation’s airwaves,” he continued. “It is very important to bring trust back into media, which has earned itself the label of fake news.”

According to the FCC, while over-the-air local broadcast television stations are subject to the agency’s jurisdiction with respect to “news distortion,” newspapers are not.

In a Truth Social post the next day, Trump said he was “thrilled” to see that Carr was looking into the licenses of “some of these Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations.”

Trump added: “They get Billions of Dollars of FREE American Airwaves, and use it to perpetuate LIES, both in News and almost all of their Shows, including the Late Night Morons, who get gigantic Salaries for horrible Ratings, and never get, as I used to say in The Apprentice, ‘FIRED.’”

In a March 16 statement, Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner, noted that the agency “licenses local broadcast stations, not networks, and no licenses are up for renewal until 2028.” She added that Carr’s threats “are grounded in neither reality nor law and would not survive judicial scrutiny, just as other recent attempts by this Administration to push beyond constitutional limits have repeatedly failed in court.”

“The concern over the chilling effect of these actions, however, is very real,” she said.