OPINION:
The Federal Communications Commission has reverted to the kind of leviathan envisioned by its creator, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used the agency with the same vigor in which he incarcerated hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans.
The FCC’s nom de guerre should have been the “Federal Censorship Commission,” and that is what the Biden-Harris administration has made it once again.
Last week, the FCC — under the command of leftist Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel — created the “Soros shortcut,” an unlawful and unprecedented maneuver to fast-track George Soros’ buyout of 225 radio stations nationwide through the acquisition of Audacy Inc.
We filed two separate petitions with the FCC months ago, demanding that the commission conduct its required “public interest” examination and investigate the foreign stakeholders involved in the deal.
A significant portion of the funds used in this buyout comes from foreign investors, well above the 25% threshold allowed by law. Utilizing the resources of his international conglomerate, it appears that Mr. Soros intends to hijack America’s radio spectrum and silence conservative voices in dozens of media markets around the country, aided and abetted by the FCC.
To be clear, It is not against the law for a billionaire to buy a media outlet. It is against the law, however, for the FCC to waive goodbye to the statutory safeguards designed to protect Americans from foreign influence and from those who wish to use public resources, such as broadcast spectrum, to propagandize communities. This is why there is a public interest requirement in the Communications Act.
There is no chance the FCC would have foregone this statutorily required review if an acquisition had been proposed by a consortium of Ku Klux Klan members. Such a proposal would have been scrutinized to determine if it could meet the public interest test. And that is why the Biden-Harris administration broke the rules to make Mr. Soros the robber baron of radical talk radio.
A legally compliant review of the deal would have likely resulted in Mr. Soros being passed over. Instead, with a new owner at the helm of 225 local radio stations in 46 separate markets, the Soros shortcut appears to have taken its first scalp. Last week, Mark Levin was canceled from his Philadelphia-based Audacy station. It will not be long before those who listen to Audacy stations around the country may be denied access to Sean Hannity, Brian Kilmeade, Dana Loesch, Mark Reardon and others.
This is not about market forces determining who wins and who loses. It is about a federal agency working through the most radical person in politics to censor conservative voices.
Consequently, by the eve of the 2024 election, Mr. Soros will be empowered to order hundreds of stations across the country to purge all conservative and Harris-skeptical viewpoints from their airwaves.
This outrageous action is the latest but not the only unlawful action by the Biden-Harris FCC to push a radical agenda and cancel its political adversaries.
For example, Elon Musk’s futuristic tech firm Starlink had previously been awarded $855 million to offer high-speed internet service to over 640,000 rural homes and businesses. The FCC terminated that contract nanoseconds after taking over. In his stinging dissent, Commissioner Brendan Carr stated that it was obvious that the FCC was “engaging in the regulatory harassment of Elon Musk.”
The FCC was not always a censorship commission. Four years ago, when then-President Donald Trump issued a commonsense executive order against online censorship, the commission prudently launched an inquiry into clarifying the meaning of a statute known as Section 230. The FCC was taking positive steps toward defining the limits of Section 230, shielding Big Tech platforms from liability, but only if they limited their censorship to the list of examples codified in the statute: obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent and harassing.
When they took office, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris revoked Mr. Trump’s anti-censorship order and instead used the commission to control Americans’ speech.
Sadly, three of the five commissioners at the FCC either lacked the courage to oppose George Soros or the moral clarity to uphold the rule of law. Only Mr. Carr and Commissioner Nathan Simington did the right thing. Democrats may genuflect on Mr. Soros, but our First Amendment should not.
• Brent Bozell is founder and president of the Media Research Center. Dan Schneider is vice president of the center’s Free Speech America.
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