FCC Won't Investigate Any Misleading Presidential Statements on COVID-19
The FCC Office of General Counsel and Media Bureau won't investigate any allegedly inaccurate statements by President Donald Trump on COVID-19 that broadcasters carried. FCC staff "today wholly rejected a petition by Free Press demanding a government investigation into broadcasters that have aired" such statements during White House Coronavirus Task Force briefings and related commentary "regarding the coronavirus pandemic by other on-air personalities." That's per a letter/order the commission announced Monday.
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General Counsel Tom Johnson and Media Bureau Chief Michelle Carey said Free Press "seeks remedies that would dangerously curtail the freedom of the press embodied in the First Amendment and misconstrues the Commission’s rules." Their agency "will neither act as a roving arbiter of broadcasters’ editorial judgments nor discourage them from airing breaking news events involving government officials in the midst of the current global pandemic," the FCC said.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the "federal government will not -- and never should -- investigate broadcasters for their editorial judgments simply because a special interest group is angry at the views being expressed on the air as well as those expressing them." He said "we will not censor the news" and "consistent with the First Amendment, we leave it to broadcasters to determine for themselves how to cover this national emergency.”
Free Press made an emergency petition late last month. The group and NAB didn't comment immediately.