By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (Reuters) - The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday that US broadcast networks could violate their regulatory obligations by airing "entirely fake polls and suppression polls."
FCC Chair Brendan Carr said on X that ahead of the November midterm congressional elections there had been a significant surge in such polls "designed to do nothing more than interfere with the regular functioning of the electoral process and alter the normal
patterns of voter turnout and enthusiasm."
Carr did not provide evidence or detail which polls he was referring to.
He added that the FCC took these issues seriously and suggested they could violate its news distortion rules.
Comcast-owned NBC, Skydance-owned CBS, ABC and Fox did not immediately comment.
Carr has faced pressure from US President Donald Trump to crack down on US broadcasters and journalists. He did not name any specific polls in his statement that he believed were fake.
The FCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the commission would issue formal guidance on polls.
Earlier this week, Reuters reported Trump's approval rating fell to a record low. Some 31% of Americans approve of Trump's performance in office, down a percentage point from two weeks earlier and the lowest level in either of his presidential terms, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Monday.
Trump has repeatedly rejected the polls, as well as surveys that suggest Democrats are significantly ahead of Republicans in the midterm congressional elections, and called on Carr to punish journalists, including NBC's Kristen Welker.
"I think it's fake polls. Polls mean something but a lot of the polls are rigged," Trump said Monday.
The FCC says on its website news distortion "must involve a significant event and not merely a minor or incidental aspect of the news report." Broadcasters face potential penalties if they deliberately distort a factual news report while "expressions of opinion or errors stemming from mistakes are not actionable," the FCC says.
“Pollsters who intentionally mislead the public should answer for it, but broadcasters who report publicly available polling data should never be punished when a poll is wrong," FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the sole Democrat on the three-member commission, said Wednesday. "FCC rules on news distortion or hoaxes do not apply to a station that reports this data in good faith.”
Gomez said if a poll turned out to be incorrect -- which is not uncommon -- it was "not something that I would say fits within the news distortion policy."
Carr in April ordered an unprecedented early license review for all eight of Disney's company-owned ABC TV stations. The FCC also said earlier this year that late-night and daytime talk shows are no longer bona fide news programs that are exempt from equal time rules for interviews with political candidates.
As a result, TV shows like ABC's "The View" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live" have stopped interviewing candidates on broadcast programs, Disney confirmed in a filing.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Nia Williams and Aurora Ellis)
