Gilad Edelman: “The scandal that briefly made Brendan Carr a household name this fall was an outlier several times over. For one thing, FCC chairmen rarely make news. More than that, Carr usually knows better than to draw too much attention to himself. A seasoned bureaucrat, he has a knack for pulling the strings of power in ways that escape public scrutiny…”
“The whole episode was an unusual misstep by a skilled Washington operator. The hallmark of Carr’s tenure as chair of the Federal Communications Commission has been the exploitation of bureaucratic procedure to consolidate ownership of communications infrastructure in Trump-friendly hands, while keeping those actions out of both the court of public opinion and the literal courts. To liberals, this is an obvious attempt to rig the media. To conservatives, however, it is a long-overdue unrigging. Why should the national networks devote airtime every night to liberal comedians who incessantly mock Republicans?”
“Conservatives have been complaining about media bias for decades, but Republican officials were long averse to interfering with the decisions of private companies. Then came the second Trump administration, and its willingness to wage cultural warfare in more intrusive ways. Carr’s role in that effort is not to tell networks what to air and whom to fire. It’s to get to the point where he doesn’t have to.”
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