I have been writing about the decline of free speech in the United Kingdom for years, including in my book The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage. One of the most critical components of the British censorship system is Ofcom, the Office of Communications, which regulates the broadcasting, internet, telecommunications, and postal industries. The most recent controversy is detailed in the Telegraph, with Ofcom investigating GB News over the simple replaying of a Trump interview in which he called climate change a “hoax.” Ofcom is investigating GB News for failing to challenge Trump’s characterization, even though many people share his views on climate change.
It is a breathtaking demonstration of the censorship culture in the United Kingdom. World leaders make controversial statements in every interview. A free press allows the public to hear such viewpoints and reach their own conclusions on the merits of such arguments or policies.
The debate over the climate change data continues to rage. The dates for dire predictions for massive environmental disasters, including those of Al Gore, have passed. Professor Guy McPherson received widespread press attention for his 2016 prediction that the entire human race would be wiped out by 2026. It appears that he is wrong.
Al Gore received the 2007 Peace Prize for his film The Inconvenient Truth as media, academic, and government censors attacked anyone questioning his data. His apocalyptic predictions have not borne out, and recent scientific papers have rejected the predictions found in the underlying studies.
Gore predicted more frequent and stronger hurricanes, but some insist that global data reveal a slight decline in both frequency and intensity. Others argue that the number may be decreasing but the intensity is increasing. We have not seen the type of global hurricane disaster that Gore described in the movie.
Critics point to NASA data to argue that the areas burned by wildfires have fallen by more than 25 percent over the past quarter of a century.
While the global population quadrupled in the last century, deaths from climate-related disasters have plummeted from the 1920s, when an average of nearly half a million people died annually from such events.
Even the film’s famous use of polar bears has not panned out. Polar bear populations have more than doubled from around 12,000 in the 1960s to over 26,000 today. While some have contested those figures, it has certainly not resulted in the wipeout predicted by Gore.
I believe that climate change is real, and there are other signs of more severe climate events, including flooding, that present real dangers for various countries. The point is not to say that it is all a hoax, but that reasonable people can disagree on this question.
That brings us back to the British censors.
In the last two decades, free speech protections in the U.K. have been eviscerated and the government is doubling down on the criminalization of speech. The criminalization of speech has expanded exponentially as individuals and groups call the police to silence those who criticize them or advocate opposing views.
Even silent prayer or “toxic ideologies” can lead to arrest. Expressing concerns over Western cultural values is now treated as an admission of “right-wing ideology,” warranting investigation. A few years ago, a neo-Nazi living with his mother was found to have a room filled with hateful symbols and material.
Judge Peter Lodder dismissed free speech concerns over the defendant’s possessions with a truly Orwellian flourish: “I do not sentence you for your political views, but the extremity of those views informs the assessment of dangerousness.” Calling the defendant “a right-wing extremist,” Mr. Lodder said the contents of his room were evidence of “enthusiasm for this repulsive and toxic ideology.”
The British people have become conditioned to censorship as different groups seek to silence those who express opposing viewpoints. The result is one of the most speech-phobic nations on Earth as offices like Ofcom fuel the fear of free speech.
Bah haha – and there you have the PRIMARY REASON THE UK IS A FAILED COUNTRY! The Weenies that have been governing since Thatcher are giddied little school children who see conspiracy and hate in a simple HELLO. Damn Limey Fools who will soon be overrun by the Newcomers they invited onto their quaint little Ilse.
John Say,
You cannot advocate for a minimalist state while simultaneously cheering for a chief law enforcement officer who threatened to use federal authority to “hunt down” vague categories of speech. Supporting an AG who mandates that DOJ lawyers carry out actions regardless of ethical concerns is not libertarianism—it is an explicit endorsement of authoritarian state control.
John Say aggressively demands absolute “compelling evidence” from others while remaining completely blind to the documented overreach, evasions, and administrative failures that occurred under Bondi’s authority.
He demands strict factual accountability for any criticism of his political faction, but grants absolute immunity to figures like Bondi, ignoring documented instances where the administration weaponized or shielded the bureaucracy from public oversight.
John Say’s standard for “evidence” is entirely tribal. He ignores how Bondi repeatedly stonewalled congressional oversight, walked back public promises regarding the transparency of the high-profile Epstein files, and turned congressional hearings into partisan shouting matches rather than providing legal accountability. By ignoring these concrete actions, John Say proves that his commentary is not an intellectual defense of the Constitution or free speech, but rather an exercise in partisan sycophancy.
Trump’s DOJ has become so incompetent courts are openly questioning its credibility. That’s never happened under previous administrations.
X, I’m surprised you had the patience to read enough of Say’s comment to gather that much.
I don’t know why people believe climate change is a hoax: I have died 15 times since the 1970s. /s
Trump’s War On Science
The Trump administration has quietly slowed funding for scientific research at Harvard and other universities that have been targets of a White House pressure campaign, according to government data reviewed by The New York Times.
The funding slowdowns at the National Science Foundation, one of the largest single sources of federal research dollars for universities, have also affected Duke, Princeton and Yale, records show. Grant proposals that had previously been recommended for funding by employees who oversee the review process have been flagged in recent months for additional scrutiny, but with no clear explanation provided in the records and researchers left largely in the dark.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/29/us/politics/trump-university-research-funding.html?smid=
……………………………………….
At a time when China is asserting itself as a superpower rival, Trump is holding the U.S. back by sabotaging scientific research. This is most certainly a free speech issue. Trump and his non-educated base seek to intimidate scientists.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Thank you for pointing out another Trump success !!!
Government should NOT fund Science. Government should not fund ANYTHING.
In what world do we think that politicians or bureaucrats have a clue what science (or anything else) should be funded ?
Turley – like tens of millions of others are waking up to the LIE of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.
This is ENTIRELY government funded Malarkey.
It it the left wingnut version of the DoD’s self licking ice cream cone.
Pay for research into CAGW – and unsurprisingly get results that “prove” CAGW – justifying even more billions in research, until – 50 years later – The Emperor has no cloths.
You want Harvard and other universities to favor blacks and hispanics and disfavor asians.
That is easy – End all govenrment funding of education.
Then they can do as the please.
John Say, without affirmation action, Asians would be crowding out, not just Blacks and Hispanics, but Whites as well.
What is the principled objection to that outcome?
In a society of laws and representative self-governance, the laws must be strictly adhered to.
If the current result is at variance with that truth, America has failed.
The “principled objection” to that outcome was enacted by the American Founders:
Naturalization Acts of 1790,1795, 1798, 1802
United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof….
Waiting for John Say to develop his first weather satellite in his garage, and launch it from his backyard.
Who needs government? Who needs weather prediction?
– scientists like Anthony Fauci.
“. . . slowed funding for scientific research at Harvard . . .”
Harvard’s endowment is about $57 *billion*. If it wants to conduct research, it can damn well pay for it. And stop forcing the rest of us to pay for it.
What is Hyde Park Corner like these days? I can imagine that people just gather to agree with each other while the police carefully monitor the crowd to prevent controversy.
I can understand the evidence for anthopogenic and natural climate change. What I don’t understand is why 2 presidents and one vice president (other than Al Gore) all proclaimed that climate change is an existential crisis. The bombardment of Ft Sumter was an existential crisis. The bombing of Pearl Harbor was certainly seen as an existential crisis. In both of those cases we had presidents who made the case for responsive action to Congress and the American people. Regarding the climate crisis, no president has even bothered to make the case to Congress and the American people why this is an existential crisis and therefore requires $T expenditures for no real benefit except to avert this crisis. Indeed, neither Presidents Obama nor Biden saw fit to have the Paris Climate accord ratified by the Senate. The very fact that certain leaders proclaim an existential crisis but don’t publicly justify it leads me to conclude that either they want to but don’t have the evidence (they don’t) or that this is an opportunity for their inner Machiavelli to exploit. DJT, as well as many people, think it is the latter.
“I can understand the evidence for anthopogenic and natural climate change. ”
Human CO2 is a tiny fraction of the natural variation in CO2 from the oceans.
Further an unexpected result of atmospheric nuclear tests in the past is that we know know the half life of CO2 in the atmosphere is 7 years. That alone means that something far more significant than Human CO2 must be responsible for increases in atmospheric CO2.
Separately Arrhenius equation has Temperature increasing with the square root of CO2.
Stephan Boltzan has it increasing with the quad root of CO2.
Regardless. that is a parabola and a bit of math/geometry would tell you that parabola’s are asymptotic.
Put differently – which is again part of the SCIENCE – increasing CO2 has rapidly diminishing returns as a source of Global Warming.
Atmospheric CO2 has increased approximately linearly since we first had a reliable measure in the very late 50’s
Warmist pseudo science claimed that would produce accelerated warming – which is contradicted by the laws of physics which require a linear increase in CO2 to result in DECELERATING warming.
Straight from the math of the high priests of warmendom – however much Warming you think there has been in the past century – it will take 2 centuries to produce the same warming again, and 4 centuries to do it again. You can replace century with decade for those of us who are younger – the math does not care about the time frame.
And that assumes every other claim is correct.
If man had the power of God to control the climate, the earth would have enjoyed a perfect 72 degrees with a cloudless and windless sky for millennia.
John Say,
Your comment is an embarrassing mess of fabricated math, misquoted physics, and basic geometric errors that completely disintegrates under actual scientific scrutiny.
To start, you don’t even know what a parabola is: parabolas are explicitly not asymptotic; they grow toward infinity, whereas the relationship between CO2 and warming is actually logarithmic. Neither Arrhenius nor the Stefan-Boltzmann law ever stated that temperature scales with the square or quadruple root of CO2—you completely fabricated those equations. Furthermore, you are completely conflating the residence time of a single carbon molecule with the actual turnover time of the atmospheric system, ignoring the fact that while natural ocean fluxes are balanced, human emissions are an unabsorbed surplus. Finally, climate science has always factored in the logarithmic nature of CO2; the reason warming continues to accelerate is because our global carbon emissions are growing exponentially, completely overriding the diminishing radiative returns. Stop pretending to do math you clearly do not understand.
2nd paragraph is AI. GSX has no understanding of what he copied; he thinks he understands what AI says, but GSX has the intelligence of a snail.
Possibly, however it is correct.
Back on urf we are diligently caring for our oceans. A happy ocean is a happy urf.
I try to separate my feelings of dread about chilling impacts on lifestyle when processing information about changes to the climate caused by methane and CO2 releases into the atmosphere. Why? What I like or don’t like doesn’t affect the physics and chemistry of the planet. I’ve enjoyed a bountiful life, and have a responsibility to pass along an Earth as provident, or more provident to human livelihood than I’ve enjoyed. There’s ZERO moral justification for shirking that responsibility — for knowingly taking from future humanity to enjoy life more now.
“Knowingly” doesn’t mean blocking out discordant information.
Only a stupid person, or one taking up a stance of irresponsibility denies the fact of how greenhouse gasses (H2O, CO2, CH4…) act like a blanket trapping heat from being radiated out into space at night. H2O (water vapor) is the most potent and obvious of these — if you live in a desert area, you know how a clear night sky differs from an overcast one…the amount of temperature drop overnight is entirely predictable from the amount of moisture in the air. Who would deny that demonstration of the greenhouse effect?
Methane also has a blanketing effect, and CO2 to a lesser extent. Scientists studying “black body radiation” in the 1880s first discovered these effects. Nobody called this new understanding of gas chemistry a “hoax”.
Geenhouse gas buildup will raise globally-averaged air temperature, but making predictions about how much and when is only a guess. When the first environmentalist goal was set to max 2º C air warming, few meteorologists were thinking about atmospheric heat transferring to the oceans, which greatly slows down the buildup of air heat.
That naive assumption is now corrected. This gives us more time to address the heat buildup. Great. That doesn’t mean the whole narrative was a hoax!
Don’t turn this into a dichotomization trap (where the only 2 choices are the most radical-alarmist reforms vs. doing nothing)! Both extremes are stupid, emotional overreaches. Neither deserve believing.
As far as what can be said in public, stupid or corruptly-selfish opinions should be allowed and then mocked mercilessly, or filtered out by non-govt. editors and media producers. There is no obligation to publish whack-job infowarfare.
But it’s NOT government’s role to police the infospace. That job must remain widely distributed in millions of private hands.
I agree the government should not police the info space. Your characterization as stupid people who would argue with the role of greenhouse gases in climate change is way off. Calling climate propaganda demanding massive changes in our economic systems in order to control climate a hoax is not at all the same as denying “gas chemistry”. The deeply embedded assumption in all this climate propaganda is that if we control CO2 levels we can control climate change. This doesn’t make sense on many levels. In the early 1900’s CO2 levels were much lower than today and yet we experienced much higher, more prolonged and intense heat waves (e.g. dust bowl from the Grapes of Wrath). There were also more intense heat waves globally in the late 1800’s (when CO2 was lower). Perhaps before we turn our economies inside out we should consider the possibility that manipulating CO2 levels alone does not give us control over changes in our global climate. Currently, we are enjoying a modestly warm short interlude between much longer Ice Ages. Changes in CO2 don’t correlate with these shifts in climate. Climate science (not the politicized version) is still groping to understand how the various known causal factors rank in importance, and how they interact to bring about climate changes. Among these are Precession (direction the Earth’s axis points rotates over time), Axial Tilt (changes from its current 23.5 degrees), Eccentricity (how circular vs elliptical Earth’s orbit is), Sun’s cycles, the position of Earth’s continents, and unpredictables like volcano eruptions. Even if somehow humanity united to directly control the absolute amount of CO2 entering the atmosphere would that really neutralize all these other factors? How likely is it that CO2 is the dominant causal factor behind climate shifts? Probably not at all. It is entirely rationale to label the current politicized climate movement a hoax and not at all a denial of science, but a reaffirmation of real science and the scientific method.
Quantitatively, methane poses 30-100X the greenhouse heating effect as CO2. Where does methane come from:
1) cattle farts
2) thawing of the tundra (Russia, Canada, Scandinavia, Greenland)
3) rotting wood (same as 2)
The amount of concern over CO2 might be misproportioned to that of CH4
Vastly simplified Arrhenius equation is T = K sqrt(CO2) Where K is a constant.
Elementary math and geometry should tell you that this is overblown.
Absolutely the greenhouse effect is real – but the impact of Human CO2 is miniscule.
Further – whatever the GHG – Nature is going to seek equalibrium.
The Ocean pushing hundreds of times more CO2 into the atmosphere every year than humans.
It also removes approximately as much as it pushes in – equalibrium.
Not only is that a necescity to prevent a runaway natural scenario that would end life on the planet a billion years ago, but the same forces towards equalibrium are true of man made CO2.
We KNOW from the atomic bomb tests – that atmospheric CO2 has a half life of about 7 years.
That is exactly what you would expect out of nature.
While I was specifically addressing CO2 above – it is true of ALL GHG’s
Methane is a more potent GHG than CO2 – there is very little of it in the atmosphere – far less than CO2,
And from that fact alone you must conclude either that Methane is extremely rare – it is not, or that the atmosphere has about as much methane as it can absorb without extraordinary changes.
Like idiots we blamed the hole in the Ozone layer on CFC’s – yet CFC’s were released almost entirely in the northern hemisphere and there is very little mixing between the norther and southern hemisphere and the hole in the Ozone layer is down near the south pole – this is where the protection from cosmic rays is the weakest and the incidence of cosmic rays is the highest – again this is basic geometry.
And lo and behold the hole in the ozone layer grows and shrinks coordinated with solar activity.
Yet we are still going nuts over CFC’s
“Who is man, that thou art mindful of him?”
It is hard for humans to grasp this – but even with 8 billion of us – and even with all that we have done – we are puny.
From the moon you can not tell we exist. One Cat V hurricane has more energy than humans have used in our entire existence.
It is and always has been Hubris to beleive that the impact of humans on the earth is consequential.
John doesn’t know his math.
You completely made up the formula—Svante Arrhenius’s actual equation proves the radiative forcing of is logarithmic, not a square root. You also fail basic chemistry by confusing the residence time of a single carbon molecule with the centuries-old turnover time required for the global system to permanently absorb excess human carbon; the atomic bomb tests tracked the dilution of Carbon-14, while total atmospheric kept climbing. Furthermore, greenhouse gases do not have an atmospheric “absorption limit”—adding more methane directly traps more heat. Finally, your ozone argument is entirely wrong: long-lived CFCs mix globally via the Brewer-Dobson circulation, and the hole forms over the South Pole because Antarctica’s extreme winter cold creates polar stratospheric clouds that trigger human-made chlorine to destroy ozone. Stop pretending your personal hubris is actual science.
It’s NOT government’s role to provide for the common defense. That job must remain widely distributed in millions of private hands.
See how that sounds? The strongest attack is by false information.
You must realize that clouds form because the energy accumulated by water molecules to convert from liquid to vapor is carried high into the atmosphere where that heat is released into space, allowing the molecules to revert to the liquid state.
Carbon dioxide doesn’t do this. It captures and re-transmits the energy over short distances, slowing the escape into space and works continuously, day and night.
I doubt the censors in the UK are very intelligent. Next they will be censoring folks who question phlogiston or Lysenko or Ptolemaic astronomy. Can’t allow questions to be aired about established, consensus accepted science that has been settled.
Al Gore typifies what one gets when combining hypocrisy, climate lunacy and TDS affliction in the same petri dish. Pretty? No. Ugly? In spades.
TDS is defined as:
‘The inability to discern that a convicted fraud is a convicted fraud.’
Trump was convicted by a jury in New York City where locals are wise to fraudsters. Yet Trump’s MAGA base of hicktown evangelicals erroneously believe that that New York jury somehow missed the ‘good’ in Donald Trump. That’s TDS.
TDS is defined as the above comment.
AOC was elected by New Yorkers, who are wise to fraudsters; therefore she could not possibly be a fraud.
QED
ATS – the american people had the ability to hear everything that the NYC jury did – and more.
In Nov 2024 THEY cast THEIR verdict.
A jury of 70M rejected the verdict of 12 left wing nuts in a kangaroo court in NYC.
Nor was that difficult for them today.
The american people had little problem seeing that left wing nuts would stoop to anything to stop Trump.
Yet Trump could easily have been stopped by Obama. All that was necescary was for Obama’s presidency not to leave such a bad taste in peoples mouths, that they voted for change from “change”. They voted for an end to left wing nuts “fundimentally transforming america”.
Trump could have been stopped by Hillary, All that was necescary was for Hillary to be someone less corrupt or to not be viewed as a 3rd Term for Obama.
In 2016 people voted for Trump – obviously a long shot, clearly not close to what people think of as a president. They did so BECAUSE they left had FAILED.
Instead of learning the lesson in 2016 – you doubled down. You sought to Get Trump by any means necescary. You concocted hoax upon hoax. And still you would have lost in 2020 but for Covid.
And frankly even Covid was not enough. But Covid did give you and excuse to discard the rule of law and conduct elections lawlessly and unconstitutionally – and also fraudulently.
Was there enough fraud to alter the outcome of the election ? Likely.
But that does not matter – as the left wing nut written Time article on how democrats won – winning required rigging the election in many different ways.
It required persuading enough people that AGAIN the evidence of lifelong corruption by the Biden family was “russian disinformation”. It required completely transforming the way elections are conducted in the US overnight. It required MASSIVE Ballot harvesting – which is illegal in 49 states.
After the election it required courts to turn a blind eye to evidence of fraud – all the way through SCOTUS – which Fortunately has recently seen the light and made clear that – Candidates ALWAYS have standing to challenge elections. The question is where was SCOTUS in 2020 ?
Post 2020 Trump should have simply disappeared – and he Would have – except that you left wing nuts just could not let go. By going after Trump massively “by any means nescescary”
you made Trump into a Martyr – and YOU relected him.
Just as in 2016 – Republicans were near certain to win in 2024 – Biden was a worse president than James Buchanon. He – or more accurately the left wing nut children actually running the federal govenrment proved to be an absolute disaster. There is not a single Republican candidate that would not have defeated Biden or Harris. But YOU fixated this nonsense on Trump – and by Doing So you releected him.
Your Kangaroo court in NYC did not “convict” Trump – they convicted you and themselves.
Do not try to blame this on MAGA or Republicans. While many americans proudly identify as MAGA – they are at best only half of Republicans. And while Many americans identify as republican – they are at best only 1/3 of voters. To defeat Harris the majority of voters who are NOT MAGA and NOT republican had to REJECT your lawfare.
You constantly rant about Trump and MAGA and Republicans – but MAGA voted for Trump in 2020 – and that was not enough Republicans voted for Trump in 2020 and that was not enough.
Trump won in 2020 because for whatever reason – ordinary americans – even some democrats, picked Trump over YOU. And they did so KNOWING all the garbage you are spewing.
They likely did so BECAUSE of all the nonsense you pulled.
John Say,
Great comment.
More and more of us are getting tired of the Democrats fear mongering, hate and rage, anyone who is not them is a Nazi and everything is racist. Their support of Hamas and anti-Jew stance is not helping them.
As for climate change, IIRC in the late 70s early 80s it was we were heading for another ice age. Now it is global warming. Didnt Al Gore claim NYC and Miami would be under water by now?
Rent-free 24/7. How’s that workin out for ya? go ahead and suffer with that irritating TDS…oooohh doesn’t he make you sooo mad?
You need to get it to feed off itself until you froth at the mouth.
And collecting money.
Funny that so many warning us about rising seas bought seaside mansions.
Young,
I seem to recall Obama has two seaside mansions.
Those are several hundred feet above sea level, overlooking the ocean.
Rch, tch.
There has been no time in history when the people censoring free speech were the good guys.
Just waiting for the first s@@tlib to call me a ‘nazi’ for the above statement.
antonio
Don’t be ridiculous. What do you imagine is the job of a print editor or radio-TV producer? Their freedom to decide what to publish implies that content not chosen doesn’t get published. This is a normal process. Framing this function of choosing what to pass along as “censorship”? Absurd.
You yourself, and every human being filters information this same way every day, evaluating what we think worth passing along to others as credible or useful. By your catch-all-definition, you are a “censor” yourself in choosing what to ignore.
There are fundamental reasons why this filtering function should never be concentrated in too few hands. That’s why government should not have such power — it’s too concentrated if that is allowed.
Pbinca, what a foolish argument you just made. You equate the person editing a newspaper or producing a newscast deciding what stories to run or not run with a government censoring speech is moronic.
So I guess having the NY Times not running strories about Biden’s corruption is the same as Biden using Scary Poppins to run an agency that would determine what should and should not be seen by the public? The same as Biden having 100s of agents at FB, Twitter and other social media sites demanding what items needed to be banned?
J**** Chr***, what is up with people on this site?
Bull Hobby,
That was an argument?
Pbinca – a publisher is free (absent government censorship) to choose what they will publish.
A writer is free to seek other publishers.
That is NOT censorship – that is how freedom works.
YOu can write whatever you want and you can publish it yourself or find someone who will.
And each publisher is free to choose whether they will publish your writing.
When Government censors – you can not get published.
You can not even publish yourself if the censorship is draconian enough.
In the UK you can not even pray silently in your own head.
That you think that the free choices of publishers and actual censorship are the same – proves your inability to think clearly.
Government is FORCE.
Government takes CHOICE away.
Individual publishers choosing what they publish on their own absent government influence is FREEDOM.
It takes incredible cognitive dissonance to panic over British regulatory oversight while remaining silent as politicians actively weaponize the FCC against domestic news networks. In 2017, NBC News faced direct threats to its broadcast licenses over unfavorable reporting, and in 2024, CBS was targeted for stripping over a 60 Minutes interview. Most recently, following the September 2024 presidential debate, relentless political retaliation forced ABC stations into “under protest” license renewals in 2026. Ofcom is reviewing a network for failing to provide statutory balance on a scientific issue; meanwhile, U.S. broadcasters face existential threats simply for airing political criticism. Hypocrisy doesn’t even begin to cover it.
“It takes incredible cognitive dissonance to panic over British regulatory oversight”
Spinning wheels – got to go round.
The UK is a mess . Free speech is a core american value. It is central to why the US is the leader of the free world.
“while remaining silent as politicians actively weaponize the FCC against domestic news networks.”
And we would be outraged about that – if it were true.
Trump has said things, Carr has said things.
But the FCC has not DONE anything.
But I will be happy to join you in abolishing the FCC – Unlike say ICE the FCC serves no legitimate purpose.
“In 2017, NBC News faced direct threats to its broadcast licenses over unfavorable reporting,”
Because you say so ?
You have not provided the slightest in the way of anything to support this or any other claim you make.
This is common of left wing nuts.
You make claims of misconduct – and assume people will beleive you – without the slightest evidence.
You do not seem to grasp you long ago burned your credibility to ash.
When YOU make a claim – actual compelling evidence is required – otherwise no one should beleive you.
Regardless – AGAIN, I will be happy to just eliminate the FCC.
Problem Solved.
“in 2024, CBS was targeted for stripping over a 60 Minutes interview.”
Because you say so ?
Again no evidence, no facts, just a naked vague claim.
BTW Biden was president in 2024.
“Most recently, following the September 2024 presidential debate,”
Again -0 who was president in 2024 ?
“relentless political retaliation forced ABC stations into “under protest” license renewals in 2026.”
You really expect people to buy this hog wash ?
The 2024 Presidential debate was a MAJOR coup for Trump. Why in gods name would he want to Punish ABC for creating a disaster for Democrats ?
Do you think before posting this nonsense ?
“Ofcom is reviewing a network for failing to provide statutory balance on a scientific issue; ”
Correct – and all entirely WRONG.
Science is outside the domain of law. Neither the pope, nor the king, nor parliment nor OfComm can possibly “regulate” science.
Science is “settled” by the scientific method – by thesis that produce reproduce-able results.
Not by parliment or Ofcomm or even public debate.
“meanwhile, U.S. broadcasters face existential threats simply for airing political criticism.”
What you call “existential threats” is just more free speech.
Again cite specific ACTS that have been done to censor the left.
The ministry of Disinformation is GONE. The funding for NGO’s to censor social media has ended.
All the ACTUAL efforts by the US government to censor speech – ALL from the left have been ended.
If you know of REAL government censorship – please provide the evidence – and we can end it.
As I have said repeatedly – lets get rid of the FCC – at the very least, lets get rid of YOUR equal time rule.
While I have seen no EVIDENCE that the Trump FCC has actually imposed the equal time rule on any broadcaster. That rule – concocted by the Johnson administration and unfortunately blessed by SCOTUS in Red Lion Broadcasting Co., Inc. v. FCC is the actual LAW OF THE LAND.
It is a bad law, but it is still law.
While I have not seen ACTUAL evidence that the Trump administration is using it,
In the event they actually were – they would just be imposing YOUR LAW.
If you are hoist by your own petard – I am fine with that.
Maybe that will atleast get you to help get rid of the FCC – or the “equal time rule” atleast.
” Hypocrisy doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
If Trump was actually doing what you claim – using the equal time rule to require that broadcasters not engage in 24×7 republican bashing – that would be using the rule exactly as it was intended.
It is YOUR RULE. It is YOUR Hypocracy.
You do not get to make a bad law, weaponize it against your enemies.
Here is an excellent history of the left wing nut driven political malfeasance of the FCC.
“The good guys, the bad guys, and the first amendment: Free speech vs. fairness in broadcasting”
https://www.amazon.com/good-guys-bad-first-amendment/dp/0394497252
This book is NOT close to complete – it was published in 1975 – and the disasterous mess of the FCC from 1975 through the present is not covered. But the left political origens of the use of the FCC to censor the right – for DECADES is well covered.
“Fred W. Friendly was a president of CBS News and the creator, along with Edward R. Murrow, of the documentary television program See It Now. He originated the concept of public-access television cable TV channels.”
If Trump WAS doing everything you claim he is doing – he would be using the FCC exactly as democrats since LBJ intended – and did – repeatedly to punish political enemies.
If Trump is doing a “Taylor Caldwell – The Devil’s advocate” to get the left to get rid of the FCC and/or the equal time rule – I am entirely in favor of that.
I have no problems with Trump and Republicans using the weapons the left has over the years creater and used against their political enemies to go after them as the means to hopefully get rid of them.
Nothing could be more deserved that the left having to endure the repression they have imposed on others.
That is not hypocracy – it is justice.
For many many hear – the absence of effort to bring about the Dream of just punishment for the left by having them have to live according tot heir own rules, is one of the disappointments of the Trump administration.
Actually John, the FCC does serve as a sort of gatekeeper to ensure broadcasters and others don’t interfere with frequencies not assigned to them. That’s a legit federal role but does the FCC need to exist outside of that function? Probably not. Commerce did that role just fine before the FCC was created. It could probably do that again without bringing everyone over from the FCC when it’s eliminated. Department of Education is one of many federal agencies that don’t really DO anything helpful beyond granting funds to the states – something that Congress could do themselves if they weren’t so busy reaching into everyone’s wallets.
The radio wave spectrum above the US belongs to its Citizens held in common. Bands can be leased out to private entities, but never sold out from under the Citizens. The FCC oversees this property, auctions out the bandwidth leases, and monitors for illegal uses of public airways.
JAFO
“The FCC does impose certain restraints and obligations on broadcasters. Speech regulations are confined to specific topics, which usually have been identified by Congress through legislation or adopted by the FCC through full notice-and-comment rulemaking or adjudicatory proceedings. These topics include:
indecency,
obscenity,
sponsorship identification,
conduct of on-air contests,
hoaxes,
commercial content in children’s TV programming,
broadcast news distortion,
accessibility to emergency information on television, and
inappropriate use of Emergency Alert System warning tones for entertainment or other non-emergency purposes.
https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/fcc-and-speech
you think Congress has the time to handle all that, rather than delegate it to FCC?
Prior to the creation of the FCC – broadcasting worked fine.
There is plenty of evidence that the FCC as a gatekeeper is not needed.
Elenor Olstrom received the Nobel Prize in economics for demonstrating how – for as long as man has been arround these supposed “tragedy of the commons” problems were resolved – without govenrment.
Ronald Coase – one of the top 4 economists in the past century – and also a Nobel winner, demonstrated with with property rights and the rule of law to protect them we will get better results to all applicable problems.
Myriads of other economists have provided plenty of evidence that the problems you think the FCC is fixing do not require the FCC.
Worse still – your approach requires giving Government power it did not have before,
and as Lord Acton noted
Power corrupts
absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I wish that Trump and Carr would quit saying things that Left Wing nuts claim constitute censorship – They do not.
But eliminate the FCC and the problem goes away.
Keep the FCC or any other Govenrment agency – especially one with economic impacts and you will absolutely have it used and abused. Power Corrupts.
If nothing else – you will have massive rent seeking.
No one tries to rent power that government does not have.
“That’s a legit federal role”
Nope.
This is a common mistake – left and right.
The presumption that because government can solve a problem that it should.
Where there is a private alternative – Government is always the poorer choice.
“but does the FCC need to exist outside of that function? Probably not. ”
Not Probably, just not.
OI will agree to ANYTHING that reduces the power of nearly any govenrment agency.
But the goal is to eliminate most of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ8LkRLuEDk
“Commerce did that role just fine before the FCC was created. It could probably do that again without bringing everyone over from the FCC when it’s eliminated.”
Or we could eliminate Commerce too.
“Department of Education is one of many federal agencies that don’t really DO anything helpful beyond granting funds to the states – something that Congress could do themselves if they weren’t so busy reaching into everyone’s wallets.”
Or congress could NOT do at all.
If states need money for education – they can do that themselves.
Or NOT.
Most people pay more in school taxes – directly or indirectly than it would cost to send their kids to private schools.
And most people do not have kids – but are paying anyway.
Catholic schools – which cost about 1/3-1/4 of what Public schools cost – deliver results as good or better than public schools – and Catholic schools will take ANYONE not just catholics, and offer discounts for multiple kids and assistance for poor families.
There is absolutely no reason education needs to cost what it does.
There is no reason govenrment needs to cost what it does.
I recently went to the district offices for my community.
Very large modern building – lots of room, all kinds of fascilities.
50 years ago the same functions were provided for a tiny fraction of the cost in a much smaller building on a much smaller site.
What has changed ? First and foremost is “public Choice economics”.
The exact same incentives that cause private buisinesses to serve people and be efficient,
cause government to deliver poor service and be inefficient.
When you go to the store – the best parking is reserved for customers.
Employees park in the back or out of the way. Even the owners do not get reserved parking in front of the store.
When you go to a government fascility – the department head has reserved parking in the primo location – usually unoccupied. Managers are next, employees next. Customers – often have to park in timbuktu or pay to park.
Everything in govenrment is upside down. That is nearly always the case – even when some government service is actually necescary.
Government spends money to increase the prestige and improve the life of govenrment.
Not to better serve the people.
This is just as true of schools. I am an architect. For decades I designed and built schools – hundreds of them. Nice Schools. But honestly most of the time – they were not necessary.
They were being built because the state required them, or because administrators or teachers wanted something, or because of pressure from parents.
I have no problems with parents making demands of schools – but they need to be doing so with their own money – not public money.
The other thing I observed is that when a district built a new school – which was usually funded through public bonds – basically a mortgage from private investors,
the next thing that happened was all school workers demanded more pay – and got it, and THAT drove tax increases.
Private schools like grocery stores must deliver value greater than they demand in tuition.
Even that is sometimes not enough – parents must be willing to pay for that added value.
But there is no luxury that those building public buildings do not think they need.
John Say,
Your argument is a cluttered, inaccurate distortion of economic history that misrepresents Nobel laureates and uses a YouTube video out of context to justify total deregulation.
Citing Ostrom to argue against federal spectrum regulation is factually wrong. Ostrom’s Nobel-winning work proved that local, highly structured communities can manage shared resources without top-down state control. She never argued that global, invisible radio waves could self-regulate without a legal framework, nor did she advocate for total free-market corporate ownership of public resources.
You claim Coase proved we do not need the FCC. In reality, Coase’s famous 1959 paper, The Federal Communications Commission, argued that the FCC should auction off spectrum frequencies as private property rights rather than handing them out as political favors. He did not say the spectrum required zero legal definition or enforcement; he argued for a market-based FCC framework, which the agency uses today.
Broadcasting did not work “just fine” before the FCC. In the 1920s, under the Department of Commerce, stations constantly hijacked each other’s frequencies, intentionally amplified signals to drown out competitors, and caused total static chaos on the airwaves. Radio pioneer Herbert Hoover explicitly begged Congress for federal intervention because the free market completely failed to prevent signal interference.
Linking to a classic clip of Milton Friedman listing departments to abolish does not support your defense of executive overreach. In that exact video, Friedman explicitly states that the fundamental, mandatory function of government is to protect individuals from coercion and “provide a mechanism whereby individuals can adjudicate their disputes”. Under Friedman’s own philosophy, an agency enforcing legal spectrum property rights to prevent corporate signals from illegally overriding each other is a legitimate police and judicial function of the state
Hypocracy℠ (John Say): government by hypocrisy
John Say, you brush off executive statements as mere talk, the administration has actively weaponized the federal bureaucracy to bypass standard regulatory timelines and target political dissent. Following the September 2024 debate, Donald Trump publicly DEMANDED that ABC’s broadcasting license be revoked, a directive that culminated in an extraordinary FCC order forcing all eight ABC-owned local television stations to submit early license renewal applications years ahead of schedule. To comply with this pressure, ABC filed its applications “under protest,” explicitly stating on the record that the directive is an “unlawful, arbitrary, and unconstitutional order” intended “to punish the station for speech the government does not like.” This is not a marketplace choice or the application of old laws like the Fairness Doctrine (which was abolished in 1987); it is a direct, state-driven assault on a free press, as confirmed by FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, who publicly condemned the actions as “naked political retribution”.
Bringing up the “equal time rule” or the Fairness Doctrine is a historical distraction. The current 2026 administrative actions against ABC News are not an application of those old policies. The modern FCC is utilizing targeted procedural reviews, such as forcing early license renewals and launching investigations into corporate diversity policies, as an unprecedented backdoor method to punish political dissent. Furthermore, your defense of these actions by claiming “the left did it first” is a classic two-wrongs fallacy. It fundamentally contradicts your own stated principle that the government should never regulate media. If state-driven retaliation against a broadcaster is wrong, it remains wrong today—regardless of what happened in the 1960s or who is currently pulling the levers of the executive branch.
Cheering for the expansion of authoritarian state power just because it targets your political enemies destroys any claim to a principled libertarian worldview.
True libertarianism opposes state tyranny as a matter of universal principle, not a game of partisan convenience. Celebrating the weaponization of the FCC to crush free speech entirely contradicts the belief that the state shouldn’t regulate the media.
Labeling state-sponsored repression as “justice” or “making them live by their own rules” is a delusion. When you cheer for the executive branch to bypass the First Amendment and force network stations into “under protest” license renewals, you aren’t defeating the “Deep State”—you are actively building a more dangerous one.
History proves that whatever unprecedented bureaucratic weapons you celebrate giving to your preferred politician today will inevitably be inherited and turned back on you by the next administration tomorrow. It would fall into your “turnabout is fair play” argument.
“John Say, you brush off executive statements as mere talk”
Correct, just like you the president has the right to free speech.
If you wish to prove censorship you must prove a GOVERNMENT ACT.
“Following the September 2024 debate. …. followed by lots of schiff that is pointless”
So you GREAT Example is something that occurred allegedly because of what Trump said while BIDEN was president.
The only debates that have occurred while Trump was president were in 2020.
Whether Trump or YOU – private actors can “demand” anything of Government.
Because private actors are NOT Government – they have no government power to exercise to meet their demands.
“2026 administrative actions against ABC News are not an application of those old policies.”
Because you say so ?
The “egual time rule” is antique.
“The modern FCC is utilizing targeted procedural reviews, such as forcing early license renewals and launching investigations into corporate diversity policies, as an unprecedented backdoor method to punish political dissent.”
Government mandates DEI policies – are unconstitutional and a violation of the 14th amendment.
You are absolute correct that Trump is going agency to agency and eliminating unconstitutional government mandates.
” Furthermore, your defense of these actions by claiming “the left did it first” is a classic two-wrongs fallacy. It fundamentally contradicts your own stated principle that the government should never regulate media.”
Eliminating regulation is not regulation. Though I would prefer eliminating the agencies themselves.
“Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword”
Matthew 26:52,
Are you calling that a Fallacy.
I want the FCC gone. I have wanted that for all of my adult life.
Though not my prefered means – given the resistance the left has used and the draconian nonsense they have imposed I am not opposed to a Taylor Caldwell “The Devil’s Advocate” solution where protagonist insurgent Andrew Durant joins the repressive totalitarian regime making it more totalitarian and repressive for the purpose of driving people to revolt.
When the “equal time rule” and other left wing nonsense imposed on YOU in the manner you have imposed on others has taught you how immoral YOUR actions are – then maybe we can get rid of this nonsense.
Regardless, I have ZERO interest in your idiotic claims of fallacy or hypocracy for supporting doing to YOU what you claim is constitutional, legal, and moral when YOU do it to others.
Either it is moral ALWAYS or it is moral NEVER.
As you are incvapable of grasping the immorality of your uses of force until YOU experience them – I am all for YOU being hoist by your own petard.
While I used the equal time rule as an example – one that SCOTUS long ago deemed constitutional, it is just one of MANY left wing nut policies that YOU have foist on everyone – that must go.
Outside of Academia – virtually no Business voluntarily takes on DEI policies.
There is massive evidence that such policies are destructive of productivity and create workplace stress. Suprise surprise – accusing people of being crypto racists makes them angry and anxious.
Telling people that every unrealized dream is the result of racism makes people angry.
So all you accomplish is dividing workplaces by race and then pitting people against each other.
Nor should this surprise anyone – shilling resentment ALWAYS ends this way.
We should only have needed the French revolution as an example – but there are thousands more – like say the killing fields in Cambodia or the 800,000 machete murders in Rwanda.
But lets ignore DEI specifically – businesses create policies that improve productivity – that is pretty much their sole goal. In the real world – in the free market – one business will try something – it will likely fail, but if it succeeds – all other businesses will follow.
Good business policies happen NATURALLY. Businesses that abuse and mistreat employees – find that the only people they can get to work for them are employees so bad they can not work anywhere else – like criminals. In the real world – good employees gravitate to good employers.
Where they are productive and treated well. Further there often are NOT policies – employees are treated as INDIVIDUALS – which is the most efficient way to do things.
An unproductive employee who wants time off to have a kid is told NO. A productive employee who wants time off to adopt a child is told yes.
Is that “fair” ? In left wing nut world NO. In the real world absolutely.
We are NOT Equal – except under the law. If you are smart – you do not hire me to be a secretary.
But if you want an architect – you could do much worse than me. If you want and embedded software developer – you will find it hard to do better.
The same is true of each of us – we are NOT equal. Government must treat us equally under the law. Employers should NEVER be forced to do so – we are NOT equal.
I have ZERO problem with the FCC or any other agencies – getting rid of rules requiring businesses to have policies they never would have chosen. Further I have no problems with Government agencies requiring government contractors to get rid of policies that violate the constitution.
YOU seem to be under the delusion that if Obama or Biden coerced businesses into doing something, that Trump is forbidden from Coercing them to NOT do that.
Getting rid of immoral actions of govenrment is absolutely moral.
But Optimally – Government stays out of how businesses conduct their affairs.
As noted repeatedly – power corrupts.
If govenrment has the power to control business policies – ANY business policies – the result will be corruption in some form. Your just angry that your corruption is being undone.
I would note that outside of a few left wing enclaves – DEI is going down the tubes – without Trump’s help – that started before Trump was elected.
It does not work – it is bad for customers, bad for employees and bad for business.
Businesses do not naturally impliment policies just because left wing nut like them.
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”
Adam Smith
A very tiny minority of people – and NOT mostly the ones who say they do, act out of humanity or benevolence.
The actual way the world works is we serve others FOR OUR OWN BENEFIT.
This is the engine that improves the entire world.
You want to end poverty, hunger, disease, … – give people the freedom to benefit from helping others – and they will improve the world more rapidly and cheaply than you can imagine.
Some of the worlds richest men – some of those who met with Biden got that way by delivering things like Cell Service to the third world. They HAD to do so cheaply – the third world could not afford cell service otherwise. You can not make poor people buy a fantastic product that they can not afford. And yet – the whole world has cell coverage today.
“If state-driven retaliation against a broadcaster is wrong”
Undoing what YOU did is not retaliation.
YOU said Government has the power to REQUIRE companies to have DEI policies.
Then Govenrment has the power to REQUIRE companies to NOT have DEI policies.
If the former is not political coercion they latter is not.
“Regardless of what happened in the 1960s or who is currently pulling the levers of the executive branch.”
Not what happened in the 60’s what has been happening under all democrats since the 60’s.
When you admit that it was WRONG for LBJ and WRONG for Clinton and WRONG for Obama, and Wrong for Biden – then we can get rid of all the stupid nonsense that govenrment imposed on business, and make sure we never do it again.
But undoing a wrong is not inherently wrong.
“Cheering for the expansion of authoritarian state power just because it targets your political enemies destroys any claim to a principled libertarian worldview.”
Trump is NOT expanding authoritarian state power he is REDUCING it.
What irks you is that in consequence – YOUR coercion of private businesses is coming to an end.
“True libertarianism”
You do not even understand your own ideology – please do not try to leftsplain mine to me.
You have no clue what libertarian is – but if you actually spent enough time with Taylor Caldwell’s Andrew Durant oppressing you – then you might.
“opposes state tyranny as a matter of universal principle, not a game of partisan convenience.”
ROFL.
The squeals of Tyrants living under their own rules are a source of pleasure.
Nothing libertarian requires that bad acts have no consequences.
If you murder people – you go to jail.
At Nuremberg we hung Tyrants – is that would you would prefer ?
Even left wing nuts beleive in re-education. Just bad re-education.
“Celebrating the weaponization of the FCC to crush free speech entirely contradicts the belief that the state shouldn’t regulate the media.”
How can I celebrate something you still have not established is actually happening.
As of yet you have not cited a single example of Trump seeking to do anything beyond git rid of idiotic and unconstitutional garbage that the left imposed by force.
I would be very hard pressed to think of a single government regulation that I would not 100% support getting rid of.
You say Trump is crushing free speech – HOW ? The left MSM is in serious trouble – but not with the FCC – but with the people who are just not consuming much of your garbage anymore.
Absolutely there are a number of allegedly right wing entrepreneurs looking to swoop in and profit off the bones of the failed left wing Media – They might lose everything, or they might manage to save it and profit. Regardless, it will NOT be the left wing nut echo chamber it was before – WHY ? Because people voted against that by leaving.
“Labeling state-sponsored repression as “justice” or “making them live by their own rules” is a delusion.”
When you murder someone – you go to jail – or possibly you are even executed.
We do not incarcerate people who do not violate the rights of others – atleast we MOSTLY try not to – though those of you on the left incarcerate people for wrong think.
Again in the real world – violating the rights of others JUSTIFIES the use of FORCE aka govenrment to take away the rights of those who used FORCE to do so. That is called JUSTICE.
“”An eye for an eye” is a commandment found in the Book of Exodus 21:23–27 expressing the principle of reciprocal justice measure for measure. The earliest known use of the principle appears in the Code of Hammurabi, which predates the writing of the Hebrew Bible.”
Wikipedia.
“When you cheer for the executive branch to bypass the First Amendment and force network stations into “under protest” license renewals”
First – I pay almost no attention to your alleged factual claims – which are almost entirely bad spin – at best.
But dealing with the rest – if the FCC or any other agency is violating its rules of the constitution or the law – then then can take it to court. There are far too many left wing courts that see merit in meritless left wing nut claims. There is no doubt that if a Trump agency is within a million miles of violating the constitution, bill of rights, stautory law, or even agency rules – that a favorable court could be found and Trump thwarted forever.
But what I see is left wing nut challenges in favorable courts dying either on immediate appeal or at higher levels or at the supreme court.
As I noted before the supreme court was and is wrong about the FCC and the equal time rule.
But YOU are not so far arguing that the supreme court is wrong.
You are arguing that the Trump administration is acting improperly – in instances you have not even gotten in the front door of a court.
I could care less if you say Trump is violating the first amendment – when out of 700+ federal judges you can not get one to agree with you – you reallyu do not grasp that you have no credibility – and that has consequences.
People read what you write and assume it is a lie.
That is what happens when you cry wolf too many times.
“you aren’t defeating the “Deep State””
The alleged actions you are ranting about are for the most part by your own description – dismantling the “deep state” – litterlaly disempowering agencies. Removing rules that you love.
With respect to your claims regarding private actors – TV stations etc – I simply do not beleive what you claim. You have lied so much – why would I ? These stations have access to the courts.
If they are actually having their first amendment rights infringed on – not some mangled spun left wing claim – then they will have absolutely no problems winning in every court in the country.
“you are actively building a more dangerous one.”
Less regulation, less power, less people. Less danger.
That is reality.
Even if the left regains power – it will take years to hire people and recreate the regulations that have been gutted. I wish it was even harder still.
“History proves that whatever unprecedented bureaucratic weapons you celebrate giving to your preferred politician today will inevitably be inherited and turned back on you by the next administration tomorrow. It would fall into your “turnabout is fair play” argument.”
And you are literally arguing that you should be immune from the consequences of your own misconduct.
John Say,
By celebrating the FCC’s forced, “under protest” renewals against ABC as “justice,” you are legitimizing the very state coercion real libertarians spend lifetimes fighting. As Murray Rothbard bluntly wrote in The Ethics of Liberty: “The State is a gang of thieves writ large.” You aren’t defeating the gang; you are actively cheering them on because they are robbing the people you dislike today.
You cannot claim to want to “get rid of the FCC” while simultaneously applauding it for acting as a political hit squad. If you advocate for the state to crush a network’s right to broadcast, you forfeit all right to complain when a future administration inevitably inherits that exact same weaponized precedent and turns it directly back on you.
“By celebrating the FCC’s forced, “under protest” renewals against ABC as “justice,””
I am not. I am celebrating what is really happening – not your spun version of it.
P{lease do not lecture me on libertarianism – you do not even understand your own ideology.
Do not try to tell me about mine.
“Murray Rothbard bluntly wrote in The Ethics of Liberty: “The State is a gang of thieves writ large.””
Correct – and the sheriff has come to town and is locking up the gang.
That is literally what YOU are complaining about.
Regardless – Rothbard is ONE libertarian. Rothbard is an anarcho-capitalist – that is a very extreme form of libertarianism.
While you would do very well to read him – you might actually learn something.
He at best speaks for a small percentage of libertarians.
Justice is punishing – BY FORCE, those who have used FORCE to violate the rights of others.
Are you saying that we can not take away the freedom of murderers ? Are you saying that Nuremberg was Wrong ?
John Say,
You don’t need to be an anarcho-capitalist to see the hypocrisy here. The core of all libertarian thought is the Non-Aggression Principle. Celebrating a federal regulatory agency weaponizing license renewals to coerce a private media company is a direct violation of that principle. You aren’t defending a nuanced version of libertarianism; you are abandoning it entirely in favor of partisan convenience. You are choosing state intervention because it aligns with your personal grievances.
Your entire argument relies on the idea that because ABC broadcasted content or held views you dislike, they ‘used force to violate rights’ and therefore deserve federal retaliation. Broadcasting speech is not physical force. By redefining political disagreement as a ‘violation of rights’ that justifies government suppression, you are handing the state a blank check to crush any private business. If a Republican administration can use the FCC to strong-arm a network today, you have explicitly validated the right of a future Democratic administration to use that exact same federal weapon against conservative businesses tomorrow.
John Say,
Your entire argument collapses on a basic legal failure: you are completely conflating the defunct Fairness Doctrine with the Equal Time Rule.
Red Lion v. FCC (1969) upheld the Fairness Doctrine, not the equal time rule. The FCC officially abolished the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. It is not the “law of the land,” and it hasn’t been for nearly 40 years.
The actual Equal Time Rule has absolutely nothing to do with balancing political reporting or stopping “Republican bashing.” It strictly applies to candidate appearances on entertainment programming, not news coverage.
No one is being “hoist by their own petard” here. The modern FCC isn’t enforcing old laws; it is manipulating procedural loopholes—like demanding unprecedented, early license renewal audits—as a backdoor weapon to punish free speech.
awwww. from georgie, who copied information about the purpose of the equal time doctrine from someone else who posted earlier at 11 oclock or 11:30. Does he have an original thought in his head? All his replies are AI, using words george X is very unfamiliar with.
Tell us about the great (Hockey stick ) lie george.
Yes! let’s see the broadcast licenses pulled from these CCP charlatans. Public Interest!
ABC NBC CBS PBS Die!
Of course “Climate Change” is real – that is just more left wing nut word games – the climate is and has ALWAYS been constantly changing and humans still have no clue as to why.
What is a HOAX is catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Or Climate Malthusian-ism or frankly ALL left wing nut Malthusian-ism since …. Malthus.
There is not a single predication of human caused natural disaster that has EVER proven true.
I recently watched Ken Burns documentary on Thoreaux. While there is a great deal of good to be learned from Thoreaux. It was evident from the documentary that Thoreaux had the same idiotic left wing nut blinders on that left wing nuts today do – and All Thoreaux’s predictions of human demise FAILED – jkust like The cult of warmism and EVERY malthusian prediction singe Rachel Carlson and “Silent Spring”
As I sit here in my living room listening to birds singing outside 75 years after Carlson.
In FACT there is more wildlife than ever.
Regardless, the computer that left wing nuts use to post Malthusian garbage on this and other web sites,
requires a great deal of Extraction and energy to create – and more to operate.
It also requires myriads more to create the factories and tools that are used to build that computer (or iPhone or …).
The standard of living that you left wing nuts enjoy is a gift from productive people who are actively doing all the things you hate to bring you the life you love.
Atleast Thoreaux somewhat honestly lived an almost sustainable life in the woods – Sort of.
His mom still did his laundry and he still went to the store periodically and his cottage was barely a mile from Concord. And after 2 years he left Walden Pond and returned to society.
John say,
While the climate does change naturally, current warming is happening at a rate unprecedented in millions of years, driven directly by human fossil fuel emissions. Furthermore, the claim that no human-caused disaster prediction has ever proven true is completely false; a peer-reviewed 2019 study analyzed 17 mainstream climate models published between 1970 and 2007 and found that 14 of them accurately predicted current global temperature increases within tight margins of error. You also completely misunderstand Rachel Carson: Silent Spring never predicted the end of all birds, it warned of collapses from unregulated DDT. The birds singing outside your window today exist precisely because the U.S. listened to her warnings and banned DDT in 1972, allowing species to recover. Finally, pointing out that environmentalists use computers is a cheap distraction—advocating for cleaner energy infrastructure does not require a vow of poverty, it simply requires upgrading the very engineering and productive forces you praise.
Wait. Wait. Wait.
Stop and think about this: the irony.
We in America often complain about Left-Wing control of MSM/legacy media which results in selective “facts” in an ideologically-dominated agenda —–without presenting opposing or contrary opinions and “facts.” In other words, we want to hear both sides.
And yet,
“…Ofcom is investigating GB News for failing to challenge Trump’s characterization, even though many people share his views on climate change.” In other words, Ofcom wants the public to hear both sides, i.e., opposing views to Trump’s.
^I don’t have a problem with Ofcom as long as it is equally demanding of ‘both sides now’ in ALL broadcasts’ contexts and reporting, I have more of a problem with selective excerpts of what Trump actually said, taken in isolated context and excerpts.
HERE is his actual speech, but you have to scroll way way down to @ para #50 or so, or “find” the operative opening paragraph starting with, “Energy is another area where the United States is now thriving like never before…” this topic goes on for more than a dozen paragraphs, one of which includes the offending language, “It’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion.”
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Remarks_by_President_Trump_to_the_80th_Session_of_the_United_Nations_General_Assembly
While we may disagree with some of Trump’s statements, my visceral conclusion is that Ofcom fashioned/framed this as wanting to cast Trump in a bad light, but the incentive was really MORE responsive to some of the insulting realities he pointed out, like it or leave it:
“I want to stop seeing them ruining that beautiful Scottish, English countryside with windmills and massive solar panels that go seven miles by seven miles, taking away farmland [with limited benefit to a small number of people?]”
“Another U.N. official stated in 1989 that within a decade, entire nations could be wiped off the map by global warming.”
“I remember hearing about the carbon footprint, and then [former U.S.] President [Barack] Obama would get into Air Force One, a massive Boeing-747. And not a new one, an old one with old engines that spew everything into the atmosphere. He talked about, ‘The carbon footprint, we must do something,’ and then he’d get in and he’d fly from Washington to Hawaii to play a round of golf.”
” we have still radicalized environmentalists, and they want the factories to stop. ‘Everything should stop. No more cows. We don’t want cows anymore.’ I guess they want to kill all the cows.”
“That’s why in America I withdrew from the fake Paris climate accord, where—by the way—America was paying so much more than every country. Others weren’t paying. China didn’t have to pay until 2030. Russia was given an old standard that was easy to meet, a 1990s standard. But for the United States, we’re supposed to pay like a trillion dollars, and I said, ‘This is another scam.’ The fact is the United States has been taken advantage of by the world for many, many years, but not any longer,’
Lin,
Nonsense like “equal time” is just another form of censorship.
Government may not control what is said.
It may not silence some views
it may not require others.
The “regulation” of speech is conducted outside of govenrment by free people making choices.
The left wing nut MSM spins what they provide all the time – and as a consequence people do not trust them and ratings are way way down – that is how it is supposed to work.
Every media outlet and every person speaking in public has and agenda – the left constantly – while having their own agenda, argues that having an agenda is immoral. That is nonsense.
It is hard to comment on the UK – free speech there is such a mess.
Regardless we should NEVER have state funded controlled or regulated media.
There have been claims that Trump has Weaponized the FCC to silence critics.
I have seen no evidence of this under Trump. Carr or Trump speaking out against someone is NOT censorship – it is the opposite. ACTING is where the problem occurs.
Regardless the problem can be solved trivially – get rid of the FCC.
I do not care if OfCom was trying to silence one view or require equal time for the opposite view – they should not exist.
Hey John Say, thanks for reading, but I never mentioned “equal time doctrine” (which, -if I recall,- had to do with balance of time for competing political candidates?) In any event, I was just about to ask you if you believed the FCC should also go? but you already addressed it! To which I respond:
(1) I believe there is a legitimate function for both entities to combat false information over air waves and networks. Think Orson Wells on steroids.
2) I believe both entities need their charters or foundation documents revised/updated to address the new wave of mass communications technology.
(3) I agree with you that they should stay out of censorship excepting those categories exempted from First Amendment, which could be subject to airtime restrictions, e.g. Howard Stern did/does not air during family hours (profanity, nudity, etc.)
(4) Excepting MSM/ Public Media, cable or independent networks/sources should be free to say whatever they want, but I think “labeling” them, comparable to “PG, G, X” for movies, etc. might help.
p.s. I think you misread what I said about, “as long as it is equally demanding of ‘both sides now’ in ALL broadcasts’ contexts and reporting,”
I’m referring to a GOVERNMENTAL entity (Ofcom) selectively choosing to edit/discredit one political party head, but blocking or censoring criticism/opposing view of the disfavored one. That;s all I said.
correction. “of the favored one.”
sorry, glad I went back
John Say claiming there is “no evidence” of the FCC being weaponized under Donald Trump ignores unprecedented, concrete legal actions currently taking place against American broadcasting networks. He’s being deliberately ignorant.
In reality, the FCC has moved far beyond rhetoric into direct legal action. The FCC issued an unprecedented order forcing all eight ABC-owned local television stations to submit early license renewal applications years ahead of schedule. This was a threat after Trump openly demanded the FCC yank broadcast licenses because he didn’t like the criticism.
This is not a “free market choice”—it is the state using bureaucratic levers to punish disfavored speech. In filings submitted to the FCC, ABC-owned stations noted that the commission had not demanded an early renewal in over 50 years. ABC filed these applications “under protest,” explicitly calling the FCC’s order an unlawful, arbitrary, and unconstitutional campaign of retaliation.
Even the FCC’s own Democratic commissioner, Anna Gomez, publicly condemned the agency’s behavior, calling the early reviews a “naked political retribution” and an “egregious assault on the First Amendment. Of course Turley remained silent.
Dissolving the FCC does not rewrite the history of how the executive branch is actively attempting to crush press independence right now. Ofcom reviewing a UK network for failing to meet statutory balance laws is a far cry from the U.S. government attempting to entirely strip a network’s right to broadcast because a politician didn’t like a late-night comedy joke or debate coverage.
You’re turning a blind eye towards Trump’s demands certain voices be shut down and complaining about OfCom is pure hypocrisy.
It’s not irony. It’s Turley being a hypocrite.
Ofcom needs to heed a better part of British culture. Monty Python’s Holy Grail. “How do you know she’s a Witch?”
“. . . the censorship culture in the United Kingdom [and elsewhere].” (JT)
I don’t think people fully appreciate the gravity of this tragedy.
Human progress is the result of truth-seekers and dissenters — Galileo, Vesalius, the Founding Fathers, Pasteur.
When government controls, throttles, criminalizes ideas and speech, those dissenters disappear. And human progress is the casualty.
(For a dramatic, grand-scale example of that principle, see the development of “biology” under Stalin’s censorship.)
On the eve of her scheduled testimony before the House Oversight Committee, Pam Bondi was caught by the Mexican border patrol on Thursday as she attempted to sneak across the southern border.
The former attorney general, dressed in what was described as ninja-like attire, was nabbed as she tried to hoist herself over the border wall near Tijuana, Mexican officials said.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she would tighten border security to prevent a “doomsday scenario” in which her nation is overrun by a swarm of criminal Republicans.
“Today was Pam Bondi,” she warned. “Tomorrow could be Ken Paxton.”
In light of these events, Mexico has decided to pay for the wall.
Canada says they want one, too.
A former senior Biden campaign advisor tells me Jill Biden’s comments are “revisionist history.”
“She and a handful of other close advisors around President Biden kept gaslighting us, telling those of us on the campaign we were the ones who were wrong, and that he just had a… https://t.co/UhXfBhYf8b
— Dasha Burns (@DashaBurns) May 28, 2026
Biden aides told @jaketapper and me that they had seen him act that way before and after. Those moments became more difficult to predict and conceal.
And Jill joined Biden for several campaign events after the debate including a rally the next day. https://t.co/5b2jQfT31i pic.twitter.com/RGYFnMYJpm
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) May 27, 2026
Upstate: excellent “revisionist” story. (I am also reminded of the recent news that former AG Pam Bondi is fighting thyroid cancer, although the MEDIA had already informed America that her abrupt departure was due to her not pleasing Trump in his quest for “revenge” prosecutions.) Very few people saw the limited news of her diagnosis-compared to the news covering her sudden departure.
I do not know why Bondi left.
I do know that many on the right were looking to force her out.
And they were seeking to do so for good reason.
I had high hopes for Bondi (and Noem) and they proved disappointments.
Bondi was allegedly thwarting legitimate prosecutions that had the appearance of being political.
She was separately abetting outside lobbyists at bilking a fortune from major corporate clients in a pay for play scheme, and finally thwarting major anti-trust efforts.
Ifd she was interfering with anti-trust – that I can cheer her on for.
The rest was bad and unexpected from her.
She also absolutely mishandled the Epstein mess, turning a huge Trump asset into a liability through her handling.
If she left to deal with Thyroid cancer – I do not know what to say.
I am sorry if she has cancer. But whether that is why she was out or not – there were problems.
To be clear – she was NOT a total disaster. As AG’s go she was good. But she did not live up to my expectations.
There are no participation trophy’s in this administration.
I hope she gets past cancer.
I hope that she has a strong future and does not repeat the mistakes she made in the Trump administration.
“I do not know why Bondi left.”
Exactly. You do not know.
That was the point being made. Trump suddenly announced her departure in April. She announced her diagnosis in May. She already had surgery and treatment in the interim (between April and May).
But the media had already decided that Trump fired her as incompetent.
BTW, your sentence makes no sense,
“Bondi was allegedly thwarting legitimate prosecutions that had the appearance of being political.”
“The debate over the climate change data continues to rage. … The British people have become conditioned to censorship as different groups seek to silence those who express opposing viewpoints.”
The only people I see who rage and have been conditioned, Professor, are the hypocrites who can’t defend their “practice what I preach, not what I do” behaviour.
The FBI, during the Biden Administration, visited twitter and facebook to suggest that certain content should be hidden from the public view. The German SS visited the newspapers to do exactly the same thing. Is it so difficult to look at history and consider the results when censorship is the law of the land? The German people after the war said we didn’t know about the millions who died in the gas chambers because they were not allowed to know. Being unaccountable to the populace has always been a goal of the world’s dictators.
There are those on this forum, who are interested in seeing that this history is repeated because they believe that the vast wisdom between their ears is the only thing that should be recognized as the way forward. Names need not be mentioned.
The only way to survive this is the be on the side that’s “NEVER WRONG” (regardless of reality)
We are All nothing but Lemmings being herded over the cliff
“Ofcom is investigating GB News for failing to challenge Trump’s characterization, even though many people share his views on climate change.”
Sounds a lot like the “investigating” is thinly masked forced compliance to follow the official state narrative.