from the tell-’em dept
At a time when mainstream media continues to struggle with calling out Trump’s censorial power grabs for what they are, John Oliver just devoted an entire segment to exposing what Techdirt readers already know: Donald Trump’s administration has been waging a direct and sustained assault on free speech and the First Amendment, with FCC chairman Brendan Carr serving as his lead enforcer.
His latest episode not only provides much-needed mainstream coverage of this issue, but does so with the kind of detailed receipts that make the hypocrisy impossible to ignore — well, impossible unless you’re a mainstream news outlet that apparently needs a British comedian with a giant rat costume budget to explain what’s happening right in front of your face.
The segment packs an impressive amount of evidence into less than 30 minutes, with Oliver managing to explain Trump’s entire censorship strategy faster than some rando MAGA account can scream “But what about Hunter Biden’s laptop?” The most damning portion comes when he breaks down the administration’s two-pronged strategy to pressure media companies:
And Carr does seem deep in the tank for the president. Trump supporters have celebrated this image of him wearing a gold Trump pin. And after the Hollywood Reporter published an article titled, “Trump’s media pitbull is off the leash.” That included this horrifying picture of car as a pitbull, he tweeted it saying, “Woof woof.”
One past FCC commissioner said, “I’m about as worried as I can be about the future of the FCC. I would say Carr is the most ideological chairman we’ve ever had and the most political.”
And he’s wasted no time pursuing Trump’s agenda. His FCC is now investigating all the major broadcast outlets except for Fox.
And Carr’s stewardship of the FCC has also been part of a new squeeze Trump’s been putting on the networks with the FCC on one side and lawsuits on the other.
Here is how it works. The FCC has the ability to regulate the broadcast licenses of local TV and radio stations. The big networks each own a bunch of those. CBS, for instance, owns all of these [Shows image of owned/operated CBS affiliates]. And while the FCC revoking a license is incredibly hard, what it can do is make it very hard for networks to sell those stations, which given the frequency of media mergers and acquisitions can be a real problem.
So networks now have that threat hanging over them while at the same time Trump is applying legal pressure by filing lawsuits to put them on the defensive. It is pretty flagrant: Trump files a lawsuit demanding money. At the same time, his FCC starts making noises about plans to make that company’s life unpleasant. So, the networks settle in the hopes it’ll keep Trump happy and get everyone off their back. And maybe they think twice about the tone of their coverage in the future.
Right now, CBS is caught in this exact squeeze, largely arising from a 60 Minutes segment that aired just before the election featuring an interview with Kamala Harris, which Trump maintains was misleadingly edited. He has sued the network in a lawsuit First Amendment lawyers have called “frivolous and dangerous” and “ridiculous junk.”
He then goes through and details how absolutely bullshit the claims about 60 Minutes’ supposed “edits” are and even compares them to how Fox News deceptively edited an interview with Trump himself.
What Oliver lays out here isn’t just run-of-the-mill media criticism — it’s a coordinated strategy using government abuse of power to create a chilling effect on speech. The FCC, under Carr, becomes the enforcement arm while Trump’s personal lawsuits provide the second front of attack. This pincer movement creates enormous pressure on media outlets that might otherwise stand firm against either threat alone.
Of course, the fact that many media orgs don’t really seem all that interested in standing up for free speech at all is another issue, which maybe Oliver can talk about later this season.
What makes Oliver’s segment particularly valuable is that he doesn’t just preach to the choir. He provides detailed evidence that exposes the cynical strategy at work. As we’ve pointed out repeatedly, Trump and Carr repeatedly wrap themselves in the language of free speech while actively working to suppress it. This rhetorical sleight-of-hand has proven remarkably effective with many mainstream outlets who seem unable to deal with bad faith liars. They continue to frame Trump as a “free speech champion” even as his administration uses governmental power to silence critics.
The segment shows (for not the first time) how comedy is doing the accountability job that traditional news outlets have largely abandoned. Documenting both the tactics and the hypocrisy with actual receipts allows Oliver to present the simple reality: we’re living in an era where censorship by the GOP is being masqueraded as free speech advocacy.
This matters because the “free speech warrior” branding has been remarkably resistant to factual evidence. When someone with Oliver’s platform and reach breaks through that messaging armor, it creates an opportunity for people to realize just how ridiculous this argument is, and to understand that “free speech” is more than just a slogan to be weaponized against political enemies — it’s an actual principle that requires defending even when it’s inconvenient to your political goals.
And maybe, just maybe, if enough people start to understand that, we can finally move past this exhausting era where “defending free speech” apparently means “fighting for your god-given right to post slurs on Twitter without consequences” while actual government censorship gets a pass because it claims to be fighting “wokeness” — as if the First Amendment has a “but not if it’s too woke” exception clause that we all somehow missed.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, brendan carr, chilling effects, donald trump, free speech, john oliver
