Brendan Carr and the TikTok Dodge - WSJ Editorial
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr is threatening broadcasters over slanted coverage of the war in Iran. He’s firing the wrong missile at the wrong target. He might want to tell President Trump that TikTok is a real national-security risk and a bigger source of fake news. Mr. Trump is understandably frustrated by the media’s pessimistic coverage of the war in Iran. Cue Mr. Carr, his wannabe censor at the FCC. Pointing to his boss’s complaint about “Fake News Media,” Mr. Carr tweeted on Saturday that “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”
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But Mr. Carr’s threat to yank the licenses of broadcasters whose coverage the Administration doesn’t like subverts their First Amendment rights. The government can’t use a license or permit to control speech. Period. His attack is also off-target since few Americans today get their news from the public airwaves. Social media now ranks as the top news source for most Americans, and it is a leading medium for adversaries to spread anti-American propaganda.
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Mr. Trump this weekend complained on Truth Social about a fake video of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier “burning uncontrollably in the Ocean.” Newsweek reports the video was trending on social-media platforms in China. You can be sure it was being shared with the support of Beijing, which strictly polices Chinese platforms.
Which raises the natural-security problem that is TikTok. An overwhelming bipartisan majority of Congress in 2024 required TikTok to divest from its Chinese parent ByteDance or be banned in the U.S. Congress determined that the Chinese Communist Party could use the platform to surveil Americans and manipulate its algorithm to promote propaganda.
But after taking office last year, Mr. Trump stayed TikTok’s death sentence and negotiated a lousy deal that will let it continue operating in the U.S. with minimal safeguards. Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake and the Abu Dhabi fund MGX each get a 15% stake in the new “joint venture.” Other minority investors in ByteDance get smaller stakes.
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