***. “The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.” [ Adolf Hitler ]
This post provides excerpts from. “Screen Shot….Under Trump, the F.C.C. has used obscure regulatory powers to crack down on network TV. Some conservatives are pushing back” [ Jim Rutenberg; New York Times; 1/25/26]:
9] “The template was now set for Carr to give Trump what he had always wanted – muscle behind his previously hollow threats to punish the networks.”
13] “Cruz’s legislation could only protect the First Amendment privileges of those outside the government at the expense of those within. – an especially meaningful concern in a country where elected officials, at least in theory, speak for the people. An attack on their platform, no less than an attack on platforms like Facebook or X, could also be seen as an attack on a cornerstone of democracy.”
15] ‘…the Reagan and Bush F.C.C. commissioners, Fowler and Sikes, along with several other former F.C.C. commissioners, all represented by a group of public-interest lawyers including Schwartzman, submitted a petition to the F.C.C. calling for a end of the “news distortion” policy that Carr had used against C.B.S….The petition won the endorsement of the Wall Street Journal editorial page.””
7]. “…the Fairness Doctrine, requires stations to present all sides of important civic issues – and to grant free air time to those who could convincingly argue that their side was shut out. But it was scrapped in 1987, after a long campaign by conservatives who argued that it gave the F.C.C. undue power over speech. Its elimination set the terms for the subsequent explosion of right-wing radio and the template for Fox News.” {NOTE: and the subsequent POISONING of some American’s minds by relentless RIGHT-WING lies and propaganda; and – the statistical decline in American’s standard of living; now in the Trump DICTATORSHIP era known as “the affordability crisis”. – which, of course Trump lies and says the higher costs YOU face don’t exist!!!!!!!!!!!!]
*** ‘…in early 2009, we noticed a marked increase in politically motivated misinformation coming from Fox News…Following the 2010 election, the University of Maryland released a study finding that Fox News viewers were the most misinformed audience on any major news network…Fox..is something unprecedented in the United States: a news business that is willing to put politics above all else.” [David Brock, Ari Rabin-Havt, Media Matters: “The Fox Effect”]
1]. “..it was hard to ignore the fact that Trump’s entire second term seemed to be a grand exercise in coercive government, and in particular that the government effort to suppress free speech drew largely on the power of the government itself to speak freely.”
2] “The administration attacked network television with particular intensity.”
3] “Here was the crux of the matter. Cruz was talking about “jawboning,” a still evolving legal term. But the line between the bully pulpit and flat-out bullying was still being drawn. “Government officials threatening adverse consequences for disfavored content is an unconstitutional coercion that chills protected speech,” Cruz said.”
*** “The Republican Party is held aloft by a large, powerful and ever-growing industry of deceit. The purpose of much of conservative media is to lie to their audience.” [Stuart Stevens: “It Was All A Lie” For 25 years, Stevens was a major Republican strategist and media consultant]
4]. “In July, Suhr sent Carr a letter arguing that “the late-night shows are relentlessly left-wing” …in September, just days before the Kimmel incident, Suhr filed another formal complaint, arguing that the late-night host targeted the G.O.P. ticket consistently, which amounted to “a massive abuse of the airwaves.”
5]. “Bias, Suhr’s firm had argued, violated a long-standing. but seldom-used public-interest standard. It was a shaky legal interpretation, but it offered the F.C.C. a weapon in a much larger war to use its power to crack down on the networks, control what they broadcast and begin a new era of conservative mass media.” [NOTE: Big Brother, Joseph Goebbels, Stalin, Putin – would all love this!!!!!]
6]. “Trump, who spent more than a decade as the star of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” registers every televised knock on him as a serious political hit. Since his earliest days running for president, he has demanded that the F.C.C. punish the networks for any perceived mistreatment by stripping them of their licenses.”
***. “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.” [ Hannah Arendt ]
8]. “Suhr told me he saw an opening to use the old F.C.C. rules to not only punish the networks for bias, but also …getting conservative content on the air.” [ Big Brother approves!!!]
10]. “Carr was clear about how he saw the stakes. “President Trump is fundamentally reshaping the media landscape,” he said shortly after.” [ Putin approves!!!]
11]. “Mark Fowler served as Ronald Reagan’s F.C.C. chair…led the charge to dismantle the Fairness Doctrine. Now 84 and a Trump supporter, he told me he was shocked nevertheless by the final terms the Paramount deal and the actions of the F.C.C.. he said it never occurred to him that the government would use what remained of the public-interest rules to compel broadcasters to alter their content.”
*** “When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, it becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about the big issues.” [ Thomas L. Friedman ]
12]. “Cantwell had gotten to a central challenge of any legislation against jawboning, which is that it, too, was a form of speech.”
14]. “Still, no matter how carefully written, the law could expose public officials to all kinds of lawsuits, some malicious, some justified, but all of them chilling, for better or worse.”
16]. “Suhr echoed Carr’s comments about the conservative turn from free-market orthodoxy….To him it came down to results.” [ Big Brother agrees!!!!]
*** “The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as the people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people who have never been mentioned. The American fascist[s].. method is to poison the channels of public information. With the fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.” [ Henry Wallace; 33rd U.S. Vice President ]
NOTE: We have now given YOU 149 posts about the monumental antidemocratic, corrupt, cruel, stupid Trump DICTATORSHIP. Please think. Please ask questions. And – refer to the Constitution’s Preamble – a statement of WHY, “We the People”. formed a new American government: “Justice..Tranquility”. – and the four magic words: ” promote the general Welfare..”
We criticize the Trump DICTATORSHIP because it FAILS to achieve those three very simple goals. WHEN, if ever, has the Trump DICTATORSHIP. intentionally acted to “promote the general Welfare”????????????
*** “Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.”
[ Justice Thurgood Marshall ]
With Justice For All 