Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Ari Cohn
On Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump announced he would appoint FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr to chair the agency, calling him a ‘warrior for Free Speech.’ But that honorific — as well as some of Carr’s own past statements about the First Amendment — stands in stark contrast to a threatening letter Carr sent last week to the CEOs of several tech companies asking for information about their relationship with NewsGuard, in order to ‘help inform FCC action.’ NewsGuard is a private organization that conducts fact-checking and provides credibility ratings for news and information outlets. … tech companies and private fact-checking groups are not curtailing anyone’s First Amendment rights. The First Amendment binds only government actors, not social media platforms or other private digital information services. Carr knows this, by his own admission …” (11/20/24)