Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) raised an uproar on the X platform on Friday after the newly Trump-dominated Federal Communications Commission issued an investigative threat against the broadcasting license of San Francisco-based local news station KCBS for reporting on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in San Jose.
"This is authoritarian s---. Trump is opening up an investigation (boilerplate government harassment) of a TV station simply because it was covering ICE deportations," posted Murphy. "When the regime decides what is news and what isn’t, you’re not in a democracy anymore."
According to the Bay Area public radio outlet KQED, FCC chief Brendan Carr, a longtime Trump loyalist who previously served as the agency's general counsel, opened the investigation because the KCBS report revealed some ICE agents' live locations and descriptions of their unmarked vehicles in an area known for gang violence.
“We have sent a letter of inquiry, a formal investigation into that matter, and they have just a matter of days left to respond to that inquiry and explain how this could possibly be consistent with their public interest obligations,” he said.
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Other legal experts have raised fears about Carr's move to investigate the station.
“Law enforcement operations, immigration or otherwise, are matters of public interest,” First Amendment Coalition legal director David Loy told KQED. “People generally have the right to report this on social media and in print and so on. So it’s very troubling because it’s possible the FCC is potentially being weaponized to crack down on reporting that the administration simply just doesn’t like.”
This is not the first investigative move Carr has launched against the press. Last month, he also opened investigations into National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, accusing them of illegally making commercial endorsements — a move he said was to lay the groundwork for Republicans in Congress to strip funding from the public broadcasters.
