My late father always teased me a bit about loving big words as a child. I began reading at a very early age and always tried to use words that I thought made me sound smarter. (Those who know me can attest that this hasn’t changed over the years.) Occasionally, Dad gently reminded me that it was perfectly acceptable to "not always use a twenty-five cent word when a five-cent one would do.” He would explain that some folks might believe I was using all those “big words" to confuse them about what I really meant.

So last week, when the Trump administration’s commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, said that he aims to “re-empower” local television stations in this country—I thought of my dad and imagined his reaction to the use of what I am sure he would’ve labeled “a real fifty-cent word." He would probably opine in his measured Southern drawl, “Well, If something was empowered to begin with, you shouldn’t have to re-empower it--unless you unplugged it in the first place.”

Never underestimate the power of a Dad to call out “some foolishness.”

Carr’s would-be encouragement to local television stations was intentionally vague, and so far, there haven't been any signs of the promised “re-empowerment.” He heads the federal agency that controls whether any local broadcaster can stay in business because the FCC issues a license to each radio and television station that allows them to operate their transmitters. The FCC can decide if it wants to “review” a station license anytime it receives a complaint about that station. 

Take the curious case of one such license review for CBS’s New York City flagship local station, WCBS-TV. An outfit called “The Center for American Rights,” whose website suggests it is active in filing legal actions for a particular political point of view. The center filed a complaint with the FCC over last October’s airing by CBS of clips from its interview with then Presidential candidate Kamala Harris on “Face the Nation” and “60 Minutes.” Because the two clips were edited differently, the Center argues that the network engaged in “news distortion” and filed a complaint with the FCC, which led to the commission’s previous chair, Jessica Rosenworcel, reviewing and dismissing the complaint against WCBS-TV back on January 16th. She would explain her decision by stating that “the agency should not be the President’s speech police."

Of course, a new administration took office in Washington on January 20th, and Brendan Carr became the FCC's chairman. One of his first acts was to reinstate the complaint against WCBS-TV and proceed with opening “a docket for public comment.” That means there is now an official review process in which the Commission solicits opinions about the matter and ultimately rules on whether or not WCBS-TV could be potentially fined or even lose its license. Meanwhile, CBS News bowed to pressure to release the unedited interview footage and a transcript of the Harris interview, as parent corporation Paramount Global is trying to get government approval for its announced merger with Skydance Media. That “raw” material of the Harris interview is now part of the official WCBS-TV review, even though no one from the local station would have been involved in gathering or editing it. The station simply had the misfortune of broadcasting the shows from the network owned by its parent company, along with 250 other CBS affiliates across the country.

This blatant move to use the FCC to intimidate a local television station’s license as a punishment for clearly protected speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution isn’t without precedent. President Richard Nixon used the FCC during his time in office to go after licenses of network-owned and operated local stations on multiple occasions. At the time, there were actually more legal grounds to do so because the FCC’s so-called “Fairness Doctrine” was still in effect. That doctrine required “equal time” on licensed broadcast stations for different points of political view. 

Despite much belief that it still exists, the “Fairness Doctrine” is no longer in place because, in 1987, then-President Ronald Reagan’s FCC voted unanimously to abolish the rules that required it. At the time, the Commission stated, "We seek to extend to the electronic press the same First Amendment guarantees that the print media have enjoyed since our country's inception.” 

Talk about actually creating some “re-empowerment.” Both for local television and those rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution in the first place.

As Dad and any Southerner might tell you—That’s about all there is to say about that.