Tag: fcc

FCC To Force Broadcasters To Publish Race And Sex ‘Scorecards’ Of Employees

The Federal Communications Commission voted 3 to 2 this month to require U.S. broadcasters to record and publicly disclose the race, ethnicity, and sex of their employees.

The now-pending regulation was first introduced after Congress’ 1992 Cable Act. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck it down in 2001 as unconstitutionally enabling the hiring of Americans for their skin color. The policy remained suspended until President Joe Biden’s FCC nominee received Senate confirmation in 2023 and flipped control of the commission to Democrats.

The FCC argued reinstating the race policy is “critical” because “it will allow for
analysis and understanding of the broadcast industry workforce” and is “consistent with Congress’s goal to maximize the utility of the data an agency collects for the benefit of the public.” The commission claimed it could not generalize or aggregate racial and sexual data because it would be “less useful.”

“We find no basis to conclude that the demographic data on a station’s annual Form 395-B filing would lead to undue public pressure,” the commission claimed.

FCC member Brendan Carr, however, said the rule moving into place is not consistent with the Consitution nor employment confidentiality requirements in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“The FCC’s ostrich-like claim that the record is devoid of any evidence that this public scorecard will be used to pressure broadcasters into making race- and gender-based hiring decisions does not withstand even casual scrutiny; indeed, it only raises additional questions under the law,” Carr wrote.

In his dissenting statement, Carr dubbed the proposed rule a product of activists who want “to see businesses pressured into hiring people based on their race & gender.”

“This is no benign disclosure regime. The record makes clear that the FCC is choosing to publish these scorecard[s] for one and only one reason: to ensure that individual businesses are
targeted and pressured into making decisions based on race and gender,” Carr wrote.

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Biden’s Controversial FCC Nominee Gigi Sohn to Face Scrutiny over Calls for Censorship, Leftist Advocacy

Gigi Sohn, President Joe Biden’s progressive nominee for the FCC, will likely face intense scrutiny over her seemingly endless controversial statements as she hopes to get confirmed to the nation’s leading technology agency.

Biden renominated Sohn in early January after Senate Democrats failed to secure a majority to confirm her as a commissioner due to her far-left sympathies and controversial statements. If Sohn were confirmed to the FCC, it would give the agency a Democrat majority, which could allow them to pursue net neutrality regulations and other leftist priorities.

Most recently, Breitbart News senior technology correspondent Allum Bokhari reported how Sohn was appointed to the board of the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) in 2018, two years before the group gave its “pioneer award” to a dominatrix named Mistress Blunt.

Sohn has called Fox News “state-sponsored propaganda” that is “dangerous to democracy” and called on the FCC to investigate if Sinclair Broadcast Group, a conservative-run network of local TV stations, should have a broadcast license.

Sohn was the cofounder and CEO of the leftist advocacy group Public Knowledge, which called on cable and satellite providers to cancel One America News Network.

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Biden’s FCC Pick Reached Favorable Legal Settlement With TV Networks Just One Day After Her Nomination

Just one day after President Joe Biden nominated Gigi Sohn to the federal agency that oversees television networks, her nonprofit secured a favorable legal settlement with those same networks that reduced her financial liability by more than $30 million.

According to a confidential settlement revealed by Bloomberg Law, Sohn’s now-defunct nonprofit, Locast, agreed to pay a number of top broadcasters $700,000 after it illegally streamed their programming. That amount is a mere fraction of the $32 million Locast was initially ordered to pay. Sohn, who served as one of the nonprofit’s three directors, signed the agreement one day after Biden announced her nomination to the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the same networks she settled with.

Sohn’s settlement with the likes of ABC, CBS, and Fox has impeded her confirmation process. During a December hearing, Republican senators Roger Wicker (Miss.) and Roy Blunt (Mo.) expressed concern over the lawsuit, with Blunt asking Sohn if the ordeal would impact her “dealings with the very same local broadcasters that sued” Locast. Last week, Wicker called for a second hearing on Sohn’s confirmation due in part to the “timing of this settlement in relation to her nomination.”

“The possibility of the nominee’s future financial liability to a number of companies regulated by the FCC, and the timing of this settlement in relation to her nomination, demands a full discussion by the committee to ensure that there is a clear understanding of the ability for this nominee to act without any cloud of ethical doubt,” Wicker said. “The committee needs to hold a new hearing on this matter to provide the nominee an opportunity to fully address these concerns.”

While Bloomberg Law wrote that Sohn’s settlement “appears to undercut” Wicker’s “stated reason for opposing her nomination,” others aren’t so sure. American Commitment president Phil Kerpen questioned both the timing and terms of the settlement, arguing that it raises new ethics questions.

“How does this eliminate criticism? The terms of the deal are incredibly favorable to her,” Kerpen told the Washington Free Beacon. “How could anyone say that she can now objectively vote on anything involving any of the big broadcast networks that just basically let her company off the hook?”

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Biden’s FCC Commissioner Nominee Gigi Sohn Wants To Nuke Right-Leaning Broadcasters From Air

President Joe Biden’s nominee for commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission hates Fox News and wants the federal agency to regulate conservative broadcasts because she disagrees with them.

The White House first announced Gigi Sohn as Biden’s FCC nominee in October.

“Gigi is one of the nation’s leading public advocates for open, affordable, and democratic communications networks,” the Biden administration claimed. “For over thirty years, Gigi has worked to defend and preserve the fundamental competition and innovation policies that have made broadband Internet access more ubiquitous, competitive, affordable, open, and protective of user privacy.”

Sohn’s inclination towards censorship and partisan regulation, however, torpedoed her chances of confirmation. Biden re-nominated Sohn at the beginning of the year but her chances of gaining Republican support are once again slim considering her history of criticizing and painting TV networks she disagrees with as threats to our democracy that need to be punished.

In one 2019 tweet, Sohn hinted that Fox News should be scrutinized because they “have played their own role in destroying democracy.”

“I agree that scrutiny of big tech is essential, as is scrutiny of big telecom, cable & media. And trust me, the latter have played their own role in destroying democracy & electing autocrats. Like, say, Fox News?” she tweeted.

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