FCC Chairman Launches Probe Into BBC, NPR, PBS

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr on Wednesday sent a letter to executives of BBC, NPR, and PBS announcing that the agency has launched an investigation into the British public broadcaster’s misleading edits of President Donald Trump’s speech on January 6, Breitbart reported.

Carr wrote the letter to Tim Davie, the director general of BBC, Katherine Maher, the CEO of NPR, and Paula Kerger, the president and CEO of PBS, after the BBC was “caught intentionally distorting a speech that President Trump gave in January of 2021.”

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman included PBS and NPR in the investigatory letter because the two outlets distribute BBC programming in the United States.

Carr said that the BBC spliced “together one portion of the speech with an entirely separate portion of the speech that came 54 minutes later.”

He added, “In doing so, the BBC program depicts President Trump voicing a sentence that, in fact, he never uttered. That would appear to meet the very definition of publishing a materially false and damaging statement.”

The FCC chief stated that the misleading edits of the president’s speech received “widespread condemnation.” The 47th president believed that the edits were so damaging that he has sued the BBC, seeking up to $5 million in damages from the public broadcaster.

Davie as well as BBC CEO of News Deborah Turness said that they will be resigning as a result of the BBC’s scandalous edits of Trump’s speech.

Ofcom, the United Kingdom’s telecom regulator, has called on the BBC to look into the issue; however, Carr, said he is independently investigating whether the BBC has engaged in “misleading and deceptive conduct.”

Carr continued:

The BBC has stated that it has a number of partnerships with U.S. broadcasters, including PBS and NPR, to distribute BBC programming here in America. I am therefore writing to each of you to determine whether the BBC provided either the video or audio of the spliced speech to NPR, PBS, or any other broadcaster regulated by the FCC for airing in the U.S. If so, please provide the FCC with transcripts and video of any such broadcasts of the relevant program.

As you may know, broadcasters regulated by the FCC have a legal obligation to operate in the public interest. Those public interest requirements include prohibitions on news distortion and broadcast hoax. After all, the FCC has stated that “rigging or slanting the news is a most heinous act against the public interest.” [Emphasis added]

Carr concluded in his letter, “I am committed to holding broadcasters accountable to their public interest obligations, and your prompt response will help aid me in that effort.”