from the preach dept
We mentioned recently that the only remaining Democratic commissioner at the FCC (and the only remaining Dem commissioner across both the FCC and FTC since Trump illegally fired the Democratic FTC Commissioners) has started calling out FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr’s attacks on free speech. In a speech yesterday, she went even further: calling out the administration’s bullshit attacks on free speech, Section 230, DEI… and closing on a remark regarding the likelihood of her getting fire. Given that the entire thing is relevant to Techdirt’s usual content, we’re running the published transcript of her speech. Please read the entire thing.
REMARKS OF
FCC COMMISSIONER ANNA M. GOMEZ
2025 MEDIA INSTITUTE COMMUNICATIONS FORUM
May 15, 2025
Good afternoon. It’s a pleasure to be back at the Media Institute. When I spoke here last year, I mused about how much had changed since I spoke at a Media Institute lunch in 2009. I think it’s safe to say that the rate of change has accelerated over the past year.
Our current political moment poses challenges unlike anything I thought I would face as an FCC Commissioner. This Administration has been on a campaign to censor and control since, well, before day one. And since day one the FCC has been implementing the will of this Administration and undermining the First Amendment at every turn.
The First Amendment has protected our fundamental right to speak freely and to hold power to account since 1791. It is foundational to our democracy. Today, the greatest threat to that freedom is coming from our own government.
Silencing dissenting voices is not a show of strength—it’s a sign of weakness. It comes from a place of fear. Fear that opposing views, rather than presidential decrees, will win out in the public debate of ideas.
And that is why I am here today and have been speaking out broadly.
I realize that, in this space, I am preaching to the proverbial choir. But it is worth noting that never in my career have I received as much support as I have for speaking out about the importance of the First Amendment and the dangers the current FCC’s actions pose to democracy.
And, over the last few months, I’ve found myself aligned with voices with which I never imagined I’d agree. Why? Because across the ideological spectrum there remains a shared belief that the First Amendment is fundamental to democracy and is worth fighting for, even—and especially—when it’s politically inconvenient.
The Administration’s coordinated efforts to censor and control are manifesting in a multitude of ways.
In the Tech Media Telecom ecosystem, they have initiated investigations and floated debilitating rate regulation schemes that target national network broadcasters for their newsrooms’ editorial decisions, harassed private companies for their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts and threatened tech companies that respond to consumer demands for content moderation and fact-checking. Separately, they have attempted to shutter Voice of America and sought retribution against lawful residents that protest Administration policies.
They are banning books and seeking to erase history from the public record and from our national museums. And they are targeting law firms, unions, and all those that have the skills and the will to stand up for the victims of this campaign of censorship and control. And, of course, I cannot leave out the fact that they have been firing presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed Commissioners of multimember independent agencies who dare to speak the truth.
Broadly speaking, these efforts are unprecedented and indefensible.
Today I want to talk about the FCC actions that are antithetical to the goals of the Communications Act, the remit of the agency, and the guarantees of the First Amendment.
Broadcasting
Let’s start with broadcasting.
Last year at this luncheon I made what I thought was an obvious statement: “our country needs a press free from interference from regulators like me.” Yet here we are.
The FCC’s licensing authority is being weaponized to chill speech and to punish the press. We are witnessing a dangerous precedent: the transformation of an independent regulator into an instrument of political censorship. This FCC has made clear that it will go after any news outlet that dares to report the truth if that truth is unfavorable to this Administration.
This isn’t the first time that the FCC has faced Administration pressure to weaponize its broadcast licensing authority. In 1939, FDR named Larry Fly chairman of the FCC. Chairman Fly, best known for his focus on addressing monopolization of the airwaves, called attention to the fact that NBC and CBS could “say what more than half of the people may or may not hear,” and he underscored that “Democracy [could not] rest upon so frail a reed.”
During this time, FDR was convinced that newspaper publishers were biased against him, and he saw radio as the next avenue through which the press would provide unfavorable coverage of him. So, FDR asked Fly to ban newspapers from getting FM licenses. Rather than capitulating to Administration pressure, Fly refused to take punitive, politically motivated action against the press. Instead, he underscored that the FCC would not ban radio licenses for newspapers, and he reaffirmed the agency’s commitment to diversity in media control.
Again, during the Kennedy administration, the FCC faced pressure from the White House. Reacting to an unfavorable NBC news report, President Kennedy called on Chairman Newton Minnow to withdraw NBC’s licenses. And the next day, Minnow told a Kennedy aide, “tell the President he is lucky to have an FCC Chairman who does not always do what he is told.” Minnow stood up against the weaponization of the agency’s licensing authority, an action for which President Kennedy later thanked him.
This is what courage looks like—FCC Chairs refusing to wield the agency’s licensing authority as a weapon in contravention of the First Amendment and the Communications Act, even in the face of political pressure.
I want to be clear. In addition to undermining informed civic engagement, there are serious health and safety consequences to silencing broadcasters. Imagine your local TV or radio station goes dark because the FCC doesn’t like something an anchor said. That’s not just a media story. That’s a threat to public safety.
I’ve visited local TV and radio stations across the country and in a variety of communities. Local news provides lifesaving information during storms, wildfires, and other emergencies. It serves veterans, seniors, and rural communities. But partisan politics is now putting these resources at risk. The FCC should not be in the business of controlling access to vital local information. We should be promoting free and open access to the news.
Unfortunately, the Administration efforts to censor and control appear to be working, at least for now. Some media outlets are finding it is easier to retreat in the face of government threats, veiled or otherwise, than to be responsive to their audiences.
As I’m sure you’re all aware, last month Bill Owens, the executive producer of 60 minutes resigned. He started at CBS News as an intern in 1988 and was only the third executive producer to run 60 minutes in its 57-year history. He resigned because he no longer felt he had the “independence that honest journalism requires.” Pardon my language, but that is a B.F.D.
Speaking as a government regulator, we need journalists to report the truth even when it cuts against our arguments or our political biases. And corporate parents should give journalists the independence they need. A free press requires free journalists.
On the international front, Voice of America and Radio Marti were once models of press freedom in contrast to propaganda regimes like those in Russia and China. Efforts to shutter these institutions or to undermine their independence sends a global message: America no longer practices what it preaches. This is extremely concerning.
The press is the fourth estate. The delicate system of checks and balances upon which American democracy is built does not function without a free press. To the journalists out there, do not capitulate, continue to speak up and hold power to account.
Section 230
A conversation about freedom of the press and censorship should include speech online, so I am going to turn to online speech and the growing government effort to undermine Section 230.
Just as the Administration is attacking journalists that hold it to account, it is attacking digital media platforms that provide fact-checking and moderation of content its users do not want. Claiming such user-supported moderation constitutes censorship, the Administration has pressured social media companies to stop these practices. One tool it is using in this effort is the threat that the Commission may reinterpret or adopt rules regarding Section 230.
As the Supreme Court has held, moderation by private companies is itself a form of speech that is protected by the First Amendment. When online platforms respond to their users’ demands by moderating content in specific ways, they’re not censoring—they’re exercising their right to speech. Fact-checking, filtering, and moderation are all legitimate responses to user demand. The government’s duty under the First Amendment isn’t to second-guess these market offerings. It’s to stay out of the way.
I acknowledge that there are many valid concerns about how we engage in the proverbial digital town square and Congress may well determine Section 230 needs reform. Until that happens, however, Section 230 plays a critical role by providing digital platforms with the ability to establish rules of behavior in their own little corners of the Internet. By permitting digital platforms to set up rules to moderate the content users post, they are able to offer unique features and experiences that attract customers.
If a digital platform has a specific vision for social discourse that it wants to make available to consumers, including allowing users to deploy their own choice of content moderation tools, Section 230 and the First Amendment allow it to create that world and to offer it as a service to the public.
FCC proposals to weaponize Section 230, however, are not efforts to solve the widely-recognized problems with online platforms. They are attempts to increase government control of online speech by exposing platforms that want to facilitate user-supported fact-checking or create welcoming online environments to debilitating lawsuits. This is not about reining in Big Tech. This is about censorship.
Let’s review: the Administration’s ongoing campaign of censorship and control is not only chilling speech but it is also attempting to control who gets to speak. Another example of this attempt to control is punishing private companies for their fair hiring practices.
DEI
I have always believed that your first action in any role reveals your priorities. This FCC’s first action was not about closing the digital divide or protecting network security. No, its first move was to eliminate anything that even resembled Diversity, Equity, or Inclusion.
We’ve seen attempts to micromanage employment practices within private media companies, including threatening to impose heavy regulatory burdens on companies that require the FCC’s approval of their transactions. These actions are not only wrong, but they also jeopardize economic growth in the name of ideological purity.
Perhaps more alarmingly, these steps have been disguised as an effort to protect the “public interest” and produce proof of “invidious” discrimination. What this comes down to is that the FCC is asserting that fairness for all requires discrimination against some. And that’s just not right. These are not good-faith regulatory efforts. These are intimidation tactics meant to control who gets to speak. And they are antithetical to our core mission.
The Communications Act created the Federal Communications Commission for the purpose of [quote] ‘regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication by wire and radio so as to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, a rapid, efficient, Nationwide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service.’ [unquote]
Efforts from the private sector, to support diversity of voices in media, support the foundational mission of the FCC.
Agency Independence
And finally, in the vein of government control run amok, I want to talk about one more critical topic. Here’s something I never thought I’d have to say in a speech: we must protect the independence of independent agencies.
The FCC is supposed to make decisions based on law, facts, and technical expertise—not politics. We take our direction from the Constitution, the law, and the public.
That is what Congress intended. When Congress considered the establishment of a Federal Radio Commission in the late 1920s, it considered the possibility of vesting the power in the Secretary of Commerce alone. This idea, however, was struck down. And it was struck down specifically because Congress feared that a single individual, subject to political will, would possess too much control over who could operate the cutting-edge communications technology of the time, radio.
Ultimately, after deliberation, Congress concluded that a multi-member Commission was the best choice. As Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover testified to Congress, “we cannot allow any single person or group to place themselves in a position where they can censor the material which shall be broadcast.” The relationship between the power vested in the FCC and the duty to uphold First Amendment rights was unambiguous from the inception of the agency.
When Congress later amended the Federal Radio Commission to create the Federal Communications Commission, it once again chose to vest authority in a multi-member independent agency. Congress’s message to us could not be clearer. The FCC was designed to be an independent expert agency led by a multi-member, multi-party Commission.
While FCC Commissioners have had policy disagreements across the agency’s history, by and large we’ve understood the responsibility of ensuring that those on the “outside” looked to us as a stable, independent, expert-driven regulatory body. Problematically, as we’ve seen at other independent agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, today, when minority Commissioners dissent, they are marginalized—or worse, fired.
It is vividly illustrative that even when this Administration holds so much power, it cannot tolerate disagreement or dissent. And that is why it continues to chip away at First Amendment rights.
To address this issue, I have launched a First Amendment Tour to Challenge Government Censorship and Control. In partnership with consumer and civil society organizations across the ideological spectrum, I am hosting and participating in speaking engagements and listening sessions focused on protecting the rights and freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment.
I refuse to stay quiet while the government weaponizes its regulatory tools to undermine the First Amendment. This is how I’m using my voice. I encourage you to use yours too.
And if I’m removed from my seat on the Commission, let it be said plainly: It wasn’t because I failed to do my job. It’s because I insisted on doing it.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, anna gomez, brendan carr, censorship, chilling effects, dei, fcc, free speech, section 230
