Dec. 24 (UPI) — Incoming FCC Chairman Brendan Carr on Saturday said he will pay close attention to television network ABC’s efforts to ink new affiliate deals amid declining trust among viewers.
Carr penned a letter sent to Disney CEO Bob Iger that cautioned him about how ABC negotiates new affiliate contracts.
Carr also said ABC must regain trust after it agreed to pay a $15 million settlement and a further $1 million in attorneys fees for false comments made during the recent election cycle.
Carr is President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to chair the Federal Communications Commission and in a letter sent to Iger on Saturday said, “Americans no longer trust the national news media to report fully, accurately and fairly,” CNN reported.
“ABC’s own conduct has certainly contributed to this erosion in public trust,” Carr wrote. “For instance, ABC News recently agreed to pay $15 million to President Trump’s future president foundation and museum and an additional $1 million in attorney fees to settle a defamation case.”
He cautioned against ABC “attempting to extract onerous financial and operational concessions from local broadcast TV stations under the threat of terminating long-held affiliations” that might cause news blackouts and other harms to consumers, The Hill reported.
“I will be monitoring the outcome of your ongoing discussions with local broadcast TV stations to ensure that those negotiations enable local broadcast TV stations to meet their federal obligations to serve the needs of their local communities,” Carr said.
He added that polling shows Americans generally trust their local media sources but not national outlets like Disney-owned ABC News.
Gallup in October published polling results showing Americans’ trust is highest in local and statewide political and civic institutions and lowest for media and Congress.
“Americans continue to register record-low trust in the mass media, with 31% expressing a ‘great deal’ or ‘fair amount’ of confidence in the media to report the news ‘fully, accurately and fairly,’similar to last year’s 32%,” wrote Gallup’s Megan Brenan.
Brenan said Americans’ trust in television, radio and newspapers first fell to 32% in 2016 and surpassed that low last year.
For a third straight year, Gallup polling showed more U.S. adults — 36% — have no or little trust in the media. Another 33% indicated they do not have much confidence in media. Moreover, only 31% cited a great deal or fair amount of trust in media.
Those figures differ greatly from when Gallup first began annual polling to gauge U.S. citizens’ trust in media and news reports in 1972.
That year, 68% cited a great deal or a fair amount of trust in news reports versus 6% who had no trust, and 24% that had not very much trust in news media.
Gallup shows a majority of Democrats — 54% — said they trust media versus 27% of independents and 12% of Republicans citing the same level of trust in American news media.
In November, Carr criticized NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” for hosting Vice President Kamala Harris for a “surprise appearance” three days before the Nov. 5 general election. He called her appearance a “clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule,” which NBC tried to rectify by airing a message from Trump.
Trump also has criticized ABC News for what he called biased moderation of the only debate between him and Harris that ABC News hosted in September.
