The Federal Communications Commission has issued final orders imposing $125 million in fines against ABC and NBC for what Commissioner Brendan Carr called “systematic failures to serve the public interest through biased coverage and deliberate misinformation.” The penalties, which include $75 million against ABC for “editorial decisions related to the 2024 election coverage” and $50 million against NBC for “promotion of misleading health information,” represent the largest fines in the agency’s history and were announced with unusual fanfare at a Rose Garden ceremony.
The FCC’s decision, which Carr said “sends an unmistakable message that broadcast licenses are privileges, not rights,” cited “thousands of viewer complaints” about “coverage that appeared designed to influence electoral outcomes rather than inform citizens.” The fines were calculated using “a new metric that weighs the severity of bias against the network’s reach and also the personal outrage of the sitting president, which is considerable.”
“This is accountability,” said Joan Berro, a commercial broadcast license consultant who once helped a low-power FM station renew its permit and now consults on “presidential retribution media policy.” “The FCC finally grew a spine. These networks have been gaslighting Americans for decades. I’ve consulted on licenses. It’s usually about tower height and community programming. Now it’s about fairness. Real fairness. Not the fake kind. The kind that hurts when you violate it.”
Reno Borja, a dental hygienist whose patient once appeared on local news, noted that “the amount is specific and meaningful.” “One hundred twenty-five million. That’s 5 cubed, times 1,000. Or it’s 125 million individual dollars. Each one representing an American who was lied to. I’ve counted money. In dental billing. It’s never enough. This is enough. Finally.”
Joe Barron, who once successfully disputed a cable bill in 2018 by “staying on the phone for four hours” and now consults on “regulatory media economics,” analyzed the fine structure. “The Rose Garden ceremony is unusual,” Barron noted. “Usually fines are announced via press release. This had a podium and a backdrop and everything. I’ve had ceremonies at Golden Corral. My 50th birthday. They sang. It was nice. But this is different. This is theater. The fine is the script. The networks are the audience. The president is the director.”
Barron has offered to serve as the FCC’s “enforcement coordinator,” provided the agency allows him to wear his custom “Media Fairness” badge and bring his emotional support ferret, which he claims can detect “editorial bias from the salad bar.”
The fines were stayed by federal judges in three separate jurisdictions within 72 hours of issuance, with the D.C. Circuit Court calling the penalties “transparently retaliatory,” “devoid of statutory basis,” and “the legal equivalent of a toddler’s tantrum.” The Supreme Court declined to intervene on an emergency basis, with Chief Justice Roberts noting that “the FCC chairman might benefit from a nap and a juice box.” The $125 million was revealed to have been calculated by “taking the number of times the president tweeted about the networks in 2024 and multiplying by his golf handicap.” Barron observed that “this explains the math” and that “if you take the number of courts that struck this down, multiply by the number of legitimate legal theories supporting it, and add the president’s handicap, you get exactly zero, which is also the number of times this will survive judicial review, and also approximately the emotional age of the person who ordered it.”
