Can Trump Really Shut Down NBC?

[cronus]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -fake-news

Can Trump Really Shut Down NBC?
by Todd Shields

In a tweet on Wednesday, President Donald Trump raised the prospect of retaliating against NBC over a news report, asking “at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License?”

Can he do that?

Probably not, in part because the NBC network he attacked has no licenses (which are issued to TV stations) and in part because the federal government cannot legally police political speech.

The president tweeted: “With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!”

“He can file a complaint like anybody else and say that NBC engaged in lying and misrepresentation to the public, and there ought to be a license revocation,” said Peter Tannenwald, a veteran communications lawyer. “The problem with that is we have a First Amendment, and I don’t think it’s illegal to lie.”

That would be the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech. Broadcasters were quick to point that out.

“The founders of our nation set as a cornerstone of our democracy the First Amendment, forever enshrining and protecting freedom of the press,” said Gordon Smith, the former Republican U.S. senator from Oregon who now is president of the National Association of Broadcasters, a trade group. “It is contrary to this fundamental right for any government official to threaten the revocation of an FCC license simply because of a disagreement with the reporting of a journalist.”

That doesn’t mean they haven’t tried. In 1972, President Richard Nixon urged his lieutenants to interfere with the renewal of the Washington Post’s licenses for Florida TV stations. The company’s stock price took a hit, and defending the licenses cost the company more than $1 million in legal fees over 2 1/2 years, publisher Katharine Graham wrote in her memoir in 1997.

“Of all the threats to the company during Watergate — the attempts to undermine our credibility, the petty slights, and the favoring of the competition — the most effective were the challenges to the licenses of our two Florida television stations,” Graham wrote.

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[L'Emmerdeur]

To me, that Il Douche would even raise the possibility is an unequivocal indicator of an authoritarian mindset, as if that hadn't already been clear.

[pErvinalia]

He's the most liberal president the US has ever had. Someone told me that, I can't quite remember who it was, though..

[Svartalf]

economically liberal, not socially, socially he's an arch conservative, as his choice of a veep proves abundantly.

[pErvinalia]

He's not economically liberal either. He's anti-free trade.

[Svartalf]

well, he's pro free-trade when it benefits Merkin business, but, bizarrely enough, not when the ball rolls to the other side...

[mistermack]

Being criticised for fake news by a president ought to be sanction enough but it's not.

That's because Americans are USED to fake news and expect it. Only the most gullible take it in hook, line, and sinker. Mind you, there are a lot of gullible people about over there. Or maybe they are just so biased that they simply accept one message and reject the other without thinking.

The danger for Trump is that the more he shouts fake news, the less notice people take of him saying it.
It's like the boy who cried wolf. Now, Trump calling something fake news is just the normal background noise.

[Clinton Huxley]

well, he's pro free-trade when it benefits Merkin business, but, bizarrely enough, not when the ball rolls to the other side...

Plus ca change.

[Animavore]

Can Trump shut down his mouth is the real question.

[pErvinalia]

The danger for Trump is that the more he shouts fake news, the less notice people take of him saying it.

I'm not convinced of that. His supporters seemed totally rusted on. I think they believe everything he says.

[Sean Hayden]

Blinded by hate they are, yes, and fear.

[Svartalf]

Can Trump shut down his mouth is the real question.

You'd have to take away his twitter tool for that, and who's taking stuff away from the POTUS?