DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: FCC chief Brendan Carr is investigating Disney's diversity, equity and inclusion practices. More broadly, Carr is questioning whether Disney is a fit owner of licenses granted by the government to use the public airwaves for their local stations. Disney has two words to describe what he's doing, and they lead off the lawsuit. Those words are government censorship.
BRENDAN CARR: Well, obviously, the Disney lawsuit is without merit.
FOLKENFLIK: That's the FCC's Carr himself. I interviewed him last night about that core allegation of seeking to intimidate ABC's free speech. He spoke more about the bureaucratic process. Carr said he's going by the book - in this case, a yearlong review that has expanded from DEI policies to internal communications among the ABC News journalists about politics.
CARR: Disney has chosen to go to court to try to block the FCC from moving forward with respect to at least some of the procedural options that are in front of the agency. But from our perspective, we're going to continue to follow the facts and the law wherever they may lead.
FOLKENFLIK: And Carr offered this dig.
CARR: Perhaps Disney is concerned or worried about how the record is developing. But again, ultimately, they're going to get a fair shake before the agency.
FOLKENFLIK: The legal team for Disney and ABC say that's already proven to be impossible. They argue the FCC under Carr has taken a series of actions because President Trump has publicly assailed ABC's news coverage, its commentary and its late-night mockery of the president. Carr shrugged that off.
CARR: So broadcast is different than cable, different than newspaper, different than podcast, where they are getting free access to a very valuable public resource - the airwaves. And not only that. The government enforces by keeping others off of their spectrum. That's not the case with newspaper. You pay for your trucks. You pay for your printing presses. Same with cable. Same with internet. You pay for distribution.
FOLKENFLIK: Carr and Trump have repeatedly said, enough - enough anti-Trump coverage. They've done so on social media and in interviews with conservative media. In our interview, Carr simply said broadcasters are required to live up to basic ideas of fairness.
CARR: But a lot of broadcasters are now seemingly saying, we want to break that deal. We want to keep the free access to spectrum on the one hand. But we don't know about the public-interest obligations on the other.
FOLKENFLIK: Trump has called for ABC to be stripped of its licenses. There are more than 200 television stations around the country affiliated with ABC. The network owns just eight. But six of them are in some of the nation's largest markets, and they turn a big profit for the network and for Disney. To question them all at once is essentially unprecedented.
CARR: Perhaps that's a sign that the last FCC in recent years, over the last 10 or 15 years, maybe walked away from applying the law and the Communications Act as written by Congress. But ultimately, I think it's the job of the FCC to do those things.
FOLKENFLIK: Carr has launched investigations of every major broadcast network, including NPR - every network, that is, except the Fox broadcast network, which is owned by Trump's political ally Rupert Murdoch, and also not Trump's conservative allies on talk radio. Scrutiny of fairness, Disney and ABC argue, only seems to apply to those who have inspired the president's public attacks. The month before Trump returned to the White House, ABC settled a lawsuit he had privately filed over its coverage by paying $15 million to his foundation and another $1 million to his lawyers. Disney's new CEO, Josh D'Amaro, now says, enough. Carr says, we'll see.
David Folkenflik, NPR News.
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