Unions, public interest groups challenge Trump threat vs. ABC

WASHINGTON—In a major confrontation over the Donald Trump regime’s schemes to censor and cow the mainstream media, two locals of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians/ CWA, plus The News Guild/CWA are challenging the Trump Federal Communications Commission’s threat to yank the broadcast licenses of ABC’s eight company-owned TV stations because ABC and its parent Disney Co., do not bend the knee to Trump.

The issue may come to a head at the August 6 FCC meeting in D.C., even though the petition to yank the licenses of the eight stations, including WABC-TV in New York, WLS-TV in Chicago and KABC-TV in Los Angeles, and stations in Philadelphia, Houston, San Francisco, Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and Fresno, Calif., is not officially on the meeting agenda—yet. 

Public comments closed on July 30, and the FCC was inundated with at least 170,000 comments. They were overwhelmingly negative, Commissioner Anna Gomez, who also objects, said. Trump-named FCC Chair Brendan Carr wants to yank the eight station licenses, in retaliation against ABC.

What is on the agenda, though, is a plan for the FCC to give local over-the-air TV stations, which are more susceptible to political pressure—they don’t have the money to fight the feds—more ways to expand at the expense of the networks. 

Trump himself repeatedly denounces the mainstream media as liars or worse. He’s forced several into humiliating settlements and strong-armed ABC last September into firing late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. The uproar against that move was so large and included so many cancellations of Disney and ABC pay services that ABC backtracked and restored Kimmel’s show and his job.

The case has important constitutional implications, says the complaint from NABET Locals 43 and 53 and The News Guild, three public interest groups and Democracy Forward, a leading legal battler against Trump’s tyrannical moves. 

The unions and their allies point out the petition not only would yank the licenses of the ABC stations, but would also condition their renewal on changes in programming, analysis, content and personnel—specifically hiring fewer minorities, regardless of the demographics of their viewers or local markets.

And that content discrimination in particular not only violates the 1934 Communications Act, which established the FCC and empowered it to license stations to use the airwaves as long as they do so “in the public interest,” but also the U.S. Constitution’s 1st Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech and of the press.

“With more than 50 years of experience in the broadcast industry, I never expected to see the FCC and an administration pressure broadcast stations with early license renewals,” said Carrie Biggs-Adams, longtime president of NABET-CWA Local 51, which represents ABC West Coast workers. 

“Intimidation from threats, and now overt actions, weakens our already strained news environment at a time when we need investigations and vigorous news coverage,” said Biggs-Adams. “ It is not legal, and yet we will never know how many stories were missed out of fear of retribution. NABET-CWA Local 51 stands by the 1st Amendment and in support of a return to the law at the FCC.”

“When given the chance to weigh in on whether to allow the FCC to continue its campaign of censorship and control, the public showed up in a big way, and the vast majority who spoke up delivered the same message,” Commissioner Gomez added.

“They believe in the value of their local news, they trust those who cover their communities, and they understand the FCC has no business deciding who is a journalist and what counts as real news. A small number of partisan voices tried to hijack this process into a referendum on a network they dislike, but the public refuses to let local stations become collateral damage in the FCC’s political games. The FCC has no authority to police the ideological balance of the airwaves…The record now makes clear this was never a genuine search for the public interest.”

The petition by the unions and their allies shows at least one major broadcast owner, Disney, is willing to stand up to Trump. Others, notably CBS under new right-wing ownership and management, have rushed to placate the president and his MAGA legions, in programming and personnel.

Besides the Kimmel firing, other damage to the 1st Amendment already occurred, the challenge says.

The CWA locals, TNG and their allies are doing battle with Trump-named FCC Chair Carr and a previously unknown Carr-allied organization, named the Center for American Rights. And if that group succeeds and this Trump-named FCC majority yanks the licenses from the ABC stations, there is nothing to prevent this FCC or future FCCs from other administrations from doing the same thing.

“The public interest…will be harmed by the nonrenewal of the licenses at issue or by any conditions on the license that would censor content, and indeed have been harmed by the opening of this proceeding, which will chill free speech,” the two union locals, The News Guild and their allies assert. 

The organizations told the FCC they represent tens of thousands of viewers of the eight ABC stations, and the workers at WABC, WLS and KABC. “Those viewers enjoy the broadcasting content the ABC licensees offer and would be harmed if the licenses” of the stations “were not renewed or the licensees are forced to buckle to the commission’s pressure and cease offering that content and offer the current administration’s preferred content instead.”  The workers would face “economic upheaval” from “a new, unknown employer.”

This first-ever demand to dump all licenses of network-owned stations “based on” the administration’s perception of ABC’s “viewpoint…violates the 1st Amendment, as would any adverse action the commission might take against the Disney-ABC licensees,” the challengers to the Trump regime add. 

“From the outset it has been clear the purpose of the proceeding is to penalize Disney and ABC because it finds them insufficiently accommodating—and, in some cases, irritatingly questioning—of the president’s agenda. The president has openly called for Disney to lose its licenses,” and Carr “has said Disney must learn its lesson the ‘easy way,’” by yielding to Trump “or the ‘hard way,’” by losing the licenses. 

Even if Carr beats ABC at the commission, the unions are confident they’ll eventually triumph against the Trump regime’s try at intimidation and censorship. “No one—least of all the federal courts—will be fooled by the chairman’s gestures at allegations of discrimination,” their challenge concludes.

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