By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The lone Democrat on the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday called on major companies to stand up to threats from the Trump administration against broadcasters and others.
FCC chair Brendan Carr, a Republican, just prior had defended his recent comments pushing Disney and local broadcasters to stop airing "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"
"We need corporations to stop capitulating. They are fraying our First Amendment and our democracy every time they capitulate,"
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez said.
"But I understand their businesses," she added. "They have obligations to their shareholders, so it's also our obligation not to threaten and not to have these complaints hanging over people's heads."
Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, had said that Carr's threats could one day hurt conservative media outlets if employed by a future Democratic administration. "We don't want to see weaponization of government by any administration against any perspective -- and that's certainly not what we're doing here," Carr said.
On Friday, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Nexstar Media Group ended their preemptions of the late-night show on their 70 ABC-affiliated stations covering nearly a quarter of U.S. households, days after ABC had resumed broadcasting Kimmel's show.
Throughout both his terms, Trump has threatened to rescind licenses from local broadcast affiliates of the national networks and earlier this month suggested Carr could rescind licenses against broadcasters for mostly negative newscasts.
"This administration is utilizing the FCC regulatory authority over licensees in order to censor content," Gomez said.
Carr defended his comments, saying the FCC was enforcing the public interest standard. He did not apologize for his "we can do this the easy way or the hard way" comment directed at broadcasters over the Kimmel show that came under heavy criticism.
He said that comment was misrepresented and praised local broadcasters for using their authority to preempt programming.
"Maybe now there is a permission structure here where they feel like they or other groups or global stations can push back," Carr said. "You've got to shift the power."
(Reporting by David ShepardsonEditing by Bill Berkrot)
