>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made with a threat coming from Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission.

Car was the one who delivered the threat regarding Jimmy Kimmel show last year.

Now he's making a broader threat, and this time it's about how broadcasters are covering the Iraq War.

Carr wrote a post on social media on March 14th that read the following quote.

Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions, also known as the fake news, have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up.

The law is clear broadcasters must operate in the public interest and they will lose their licenses if they do not.

End quote.

CBS news explained it this way.

Quote, the FCC chair did not name specific networks or cite any stories he believes were reported incorrectly.

But Carr's post referenced a Truth Social post from the president about the war in Iran.

The FCC and independent agency issues eight year licenses to individual broadcast stations, many of which are owned and operated by television networks.

It does not license TV networks such as CBS, NBC, ABC or Fox.

Mr.

Trump has repeatedly accused the media of falsely reporting on the war in Iran, and back in September, the president said that networks covering him negatively should maybe have their licenses revoked.

He said such a decision would be up to Brendan Carr, whom he appointed earlier in 2025.

End quote.

This hour, we discussed the threat from the White House, one that President Trump has endorsed, saying he thinks Brendan Carr is doing a great job with this.

My guest this hour include a longtime journalist, Gary Craig, retired public safety and criminal justice reporter for the Democrat and Chronicle.

He's the author of 7 million, coauthor of The Prison Guard's Daughter.

He writes a Substack that has no title that he knows how to describe for you.

He's a terrible marketer, but a very good journalist.

>> I appreciate that one day I'll improve on my marketing, but the day is getting late to do that.

>> Gary, welcome back and welcome to Richard Dollinger.

Judge Dollinger retired from the New York Court of Claims.

Welcome back to the program, sir.

Nice to have you.

>> It's great to be here.

Evan and I have one little matter of personal privilege before I start.

the man to my right, Gary Craig, is in the pantheon of Democrat and chronicle in Times Union journalists.

I think of Peter Taub and Bob Matthews and Arch Merrill, my good friend Jay Gallagher.

But Gary Craig's work for our newspapers and for educating the public over the last 40 or 50 years has been sensational.

He deserves to be in the pantheon of great Democrat and chronicle in Times Union reporter.

>> So I thank you, Rick.

I'm touched.

I'm honored.

Thank you.

>> He didn't come here for this.

He actually hates that kind of praise.

But also why limit it to Democrat and Chronicle in Times Union?

He's one of the great journalists we've ever had.

>> I completely concur with that.

I even go back to the Rochester Union Advertiser's back in the 19th century.

So it's a pleasure to be here with Gary and to be with you, Evan, as well, to talk about this.

>> This is probably the wrong time, but I will if we have a moment later in the show or tell the story later on, because we go back before while I was at the Times Union, we go way back and we used to do the Curt Smith show together on w r o c and he.

One time I just I'll tell a quick story.

I went stone cold.

Curt threw me a question.

I wasn't going to be political or anything.

I answer, and I just.

you froze, I froze and it probably was only like four seconds, but it felt like an eternity.

And Rick, I don't know if you remember this, but I've been grateful to him.

I don't think I've ever told him this.

He threw me a lifeline.

He intervened.

He saw me sort of drowning there, and he stepped in and, like, picked up the conversation seamlessly.

So.

>> Well, so that.

>> Will happen today also.

>> Okay, well, we're here to talk about something that this is let me start with this, Rick.

A number of members of Congress in the Senate have called on Brendan Carr to resign over this.

Most of the members calling him to do so are Democrats.

Do you think Brendan Carr should resign over this?

Rick?

>> that's always a tough question because from my point of view, he was appointed by the president.

His statement, as you properly pointed out at the start, his statement about failing to renew or taking away the licenses of local broadcasters is a complete mirror of his boss, the president, who appointed him.

So I'm respectful of executive power and appointments, and I'm not.

I think his the content of what he said is worthy of being removed.

But at the same time, I understand the way the system works.

And it seems to me that Brendan Carr goes, we probably end up with an even more sycophantic leader of the FCC in the next go round.

So I'm not so sure having him resign accomplishes much of anything.

>> Here's how the Guardian in the UK reported on car's threat.

Quote, Trump's FCC chair wants American media to work like Iran's state TV.

What do you make of that?

Gary Craig?

>> Well, it's hard to dispute that.

I mean, I think it's right on point.

Just if you take, you know, as a former reporter, though, I wasn't doing White House press conference on wars, these men and women are just doing their job.

They're asking tough questions.

And if you go back through recent history where there was Vietnam, not that recent anymore, you go back.

The original reporting was pretty boosterish until the halberstam's of the world, and Peter Arnett's and others sort of reported, you know, from the ground similar.

You take the New York Times with its reporting on WMD in Iraq.

I mean, that kind of, I think, generated more public support.

And when we found out that was one of its most embarrassing moments with what the times did there.

>> So it was a little too credulous.

>> It was.

Yeah.

And, you know, and so I think a skeptical press, when we make a decision to enter war slash excursion is should be expected and it should be respected as well.

And that's the part that's so bothersome.

Well, the whole thing is bothersome, but it's hard to argue with what the Guardian said.

>> Well, and so in that Guardian, it's an, it's an editorial from the Guardian and I want to read a couple of the points they make in that piece.

I'll quote them.

Now, cars threats make no sense under the law, and he knows they're wrong.

But that's never stopped him before.

Car has attacked late night comedians.

He's attacked talk shows, major networks, public broadcasters and radio stations while purging the word independent from the FCC's actual website.

His message is clear displeased Trump and the FCC will make you pay a price every single time.

Car has deemed a news report distortion or a comedic wisecrack outside the public interest.

It's been something that Nettles, the man whose face is on his lapel pin Donald Trump.

But just because the threats are legally hollow doesn't make them ineffective.

Station owners, wary of expensive legal battles or merger delays, often capitulate rather than fight back, they bury reporting critical of the Trump administration or simply pull back on political reporting or commentary altogether.

End quote.

So on the legal case, Rick, do you agree?

I'm going to start with you on the legal case.

Rick, I want to ask if you agree that car's threats carry no legal weight.

And part of the reason I want to start with you is early on in the new Trump administration, in just over a year ago, you and I sat down for what's become a series of conversations that I think are all related in different ways, which is, are the courts holding up?

Is the balance of power holding up is the legal system that we know and trust holding up here.

Now, this isn't just a this is not a conversation about the Supreme Court, but this is a conversation about whether the legal case, which seems really flimsy, would fall apart.

Or should we not assume that Brendan Carr President Trump or anyone else could lose here would lose.

So how do you feel about the Guardians point that cars threats don't carry any actual legal weight?

>> I completely concur with that.

The the rule for the FCC.

And let me just spend one minute to go back and trace the history here, because I think it's important.

with the development of radio in the early part of the 20th century what happened is there was a proliferation of radio broadcasts.

It wasn't all that expensive to establish a radio transmitter, put up a tower, and the next thing you know, there were just airwaves being populated by radio stations everywhere.

and as a consequence, the federal government was asked to step in, which it did originally with something called the Radio Commission Act, which was to license certain purveyors of radio signals within a geographic area.

And it also gave some like w h a m here in town, the ability to be a bigger broadcast network.

They expanded the scope of a extensive.

I'm not sure I remember the legal term for.

But it's a wide broadcasting.

Which is why w h a m can be heard virtually any place in the eastern United States if you got it.

So what happened is they they wanted to sanction local broadcasts.

So the Radio Commission Act originally said, we're going to license these.

And then in the 1930s in the New Deal, the push was to create an agency under the Federal Communications Act that would have the ability to control at that time, exclusively radio licensing.

And as a consequence, the FCC started to grant radio licenses within geographic areas.

It was designed to both prevent overproliferation, but at the same time, it had the goal of increasing competition, that there should be competitive voices available, much like in Gary's business.

In the newspaper business, which of course never had such regulations because that's been a part of our culture and our part of our history for 4 or 500 years.

But be that as it may, in the 1930s, the FCC began to grant broad extended the licensing of those broadcasts in radio.

When television came along, they used the same theory to localize television content and establish local broadcasting licenses as well.

And they established the one critical thing that has remained in the scope of the FCC control is that the Congress did not want to allow the FCC to control content, was not going to tell those stations what to do, but they put one restriction on it, and that was nothing.

That's obscene.

And that became the standard, was that you couldn't do pornography or obscenity.

If you remember, one of the the great hubbub of the 1960s and 70s was George Carlin's eight Words that you can't utter on television or on.

>> The radio.

Is it.

>> Seven seven?

I think it was seven words.

But now, of course, almost all those words are part of the public discourse.

If you listen to the president of the United States, he uses.

>> Please don't say.

>> Them.

I won't I, I don't want you to lose your license.

Okay, so we're not going to do that.

But the bottom line is this the the extent of the FCC's ability to control content of broadcasting was focused exclusively based on the Communications Act, which said, you can't be obscene and you can't be pornographic.

The rest of content is governed by the First Amendment, and it always has been, whether it's in the newspaper or whether it's in the airwaves.

And from my point of view Brendan Carr, he knows this.

He knows that he can't control content.

What he's trying to do is frighten people into an expensive legal battle that they would have to defend their license.

It's not different from what Trump did to the law firms, what he's done to other businesses when he threatens them with legal action, which is going to cost money, take time, divert their resources and hope that that bullying by threatening litigation will bring about conformity with his point of view.

>> Okay, so before I get to Gary on the downstream effects of this, let me just follow up and say, you truly don't think.

I mean, I take the point.

There's a chilling effect on with lawsuits.

Saber rattling is very effective, especially when your opponents have smaller budgets, but you don't think there's any way he actually wins in court that they could strip licenses and have that hold up?

>> Not a chance.

Not a chance.

The the theory is that you can't.

I mean, this whole theory, it seems to me, based on the president's tweet or whatever it was called, is that you can't criticize the president of the United States with with all due respect, there would be no point for any late night television to be aired in the United States if criticizing the president of the United States was somehow prevented you from getting a license, well, Obama was the subject.

Biden was the subject.

Trump's been the subject.

Bush was the.

>> Trump's argument, Rick, is that it's disproportionate.

He said it's 97% of media coverage of him is negative.

And that that crosses a line and that that is outside the public interest and unfair.

>> Start a war with Iran without congressional authority.

You ought to be criticized till the cows come home.

That's all there is to it.

You can't do those things in violation of the Constitution and not expect someone to criticize you, period.

>> Which particular statute is it?

Is it 94% of the coverage can be negative, but not 97.

Like where's the line?

>> Well, and, and my guess is if you have an extraordinarily thin skin, extraordinarily thin, like paper, thin tissue, paper thin, and someone pokes you slightly, I assume that that means you lose your license.

I it it's, it's unbelievable to me that a public figure who became the president of the United States would have such such thin skin.

>> So I think we've got one clip.

Do we still have the clip here?

So this is President Trump in a media scrum here.

And this is the kind of reporting questioning, broadcasting apparently, that both he and Brendan Carr object to.

Now audio isn't great here.

You're going to hear the president's response to a question from a woman in the in the scrum who was asking a series of questions.

Some were about the American service members who've been killed in the war in Iran.

Some were about the possible risk to Marines or others if we engage in any kind of ground war in Iran.

So just listen and listen to what the president says.

>> it's something we talk about.

See what happens.

Sir, have you talked about selling oil?

Thousand Marines and sailors?

Can you explain why you're very obnoxious person?

Go ahead.

What were you going to say?

>> I wanted to ask you if you talked about about selling oil futures.

>> So understand?

He immediately dismisses a question about 5000 Marines who might be sent to to Kharg to a number of places in Iran and tells the reporter, that's an obnoxious question.

He circled back later and said, you're an obnoxious person.

You're a bad reporter.

There's a couple of things I want to kind of probe here, but I want to start by asking Gary Craig about the thing that bothers me as a journalist.

Why does the man who gets the next question, why did he ignore the fact that the president shouldn't he say, look, I have my own question, but I do think her question is fair and that you called obnoxious.

Can you answer her question?

Why do they not do this?

>> Thank you so much.

I have been wanting them to do this forever.

I mean I think Patty singer was on the show some years ago when she was our health reporter.

Very different than the White House, but she and I had covered a couple of them when she was with the minority reporter after leaving the DNC.

I remember there were at least twice where we were covering some press conference on police shootings or some questions of police accountability.

And that's exactly what we did.

If I asked a question that the answer was either slim or nonexistent, Patty followed up.

Patty did the exact same thing.

And if ever there is a place in a time that that needs to be done, one just out of the.

I'm so tired of the name calling.

And it often is, you know, sexist and misogynistic when you hear it.

>> It's often called a woman piggy.

>> Yeah.

And and you would hope that these folks would sort of team up and say, okay, we're going to, even if it's an answer, we're going to get some semblance of an answer to this question, even if it takes six of us to ask the exact same question.

I've been wishing they would do that forever.

But but it just doesn't happen.

>> Okay, so we're on the same page.

I am baffled by that.

but the question that you heard there, she's asked about the possibility that there could be 5000 Marines or any number of, of American service members to do a number of things, securing Kharg Island, perhaps going after enriched uranium that could be deep underground.

and the White House has been cagey about whether it actually wants to do this to me.

Gary, that is a perfectly legitimate question, isn't it?

>> Oh, yes.

I mean.

>> I mean, a required question.

>> Yeah.

Many of the I mean, many of the questions that are apparently considered insulting or have received responses like that are perfectly legitimate questions.

I mean, they're the questions that you should be asking at this time.

This is this is a massive decision that has been made.

I mean, lives have been lost, you know, and I think everybody has that concern.

And the idea that you can sort of just, you know, prance through the day without answering the tough questions about a decision like this.

It's just it's, it's a level of absurdity.

I wrote my, my unnamed Substack.

I mean, today I wrote about, you know, promoting the show here that it's not completely new for the, for presidential administration to go after the media, of course.

I mean, but the difference here is the almost transparent ham handedness of it.

That is just I mean, maybe they should be commended for that because, you know, they're their move toward unconstitutional decisions and perhaps actions, we hope is just so blatant and transparent.

>> But part of what they might be trying to do, as Judge Dollinger has said, is simply freeze an outlet or color an outlet coverage, get an outlet, get a newsroom to back off a little bit.

Maybe, maybe the subtext of Brendan Carr and President Trump criticizing the media over the Iraq war is we're going to threaten to take away your licenses.

But in the meantime, we want you second guessing whether you're going to publish the next story.

Could that happen?

>> Oh, I mean, I think we've seen it happening.

We've seen it, you know, with what I think were probably cases that would have been won had they gone to court with the CBS case or others.

And, and, you know, basically they, you know, they paid some money and, you know, that was the end of it.

Instead of taking it to court on that front, I many times, many times, several times in the past, I was on here as a union member, sort of fighting against Gannett.

And so, and, and and one thing I do want to say, praising my former employer is they had that lawsuit where kind of a handpicked, you know, organization, Trump handpicked organization sued out in Des Moines over the polls that showed, you know, Kamala Harris is going to win.

in Iowa.

Yeah.

In Iowa.

Exactly.

I forget the pollsters name.

She's been doing it forever.

My apologies.

And and it was wrong.

That happens.

But they they treated they sued as if as if there were purposeful.

>> The poll was wrong and Trump won.

>> Exactly.

And think.

And to their credit, you know best they know.

I mean I know they wanted the federal level.

I think it's been reintroduced as a state litigation.

But I just want to commend Jeanette for not doing what others did and just sort of kowtowing to the administration.

>> So on that note, Rick, when when you hear that the president wants to sue a paper in Iowa, Gary's point is correct.

The pollster had gotten like every Iowa call, right?

Going back many, many presidential elections and got this one wrong, got the Kamala Harris and President Trump and Donald Trump race wrong.

President Trump decides that was malicious.

It was designed to take the wind out of my sails.

and we're going to sue over this.

Does that strike you as absurd or is there any is it worth trying to peel back the onion and find out if there's any merit to a claim like that?

>> Let's go back.

Human beings are going to make mistakes.

Gary and I were both members of the Newspaper Guild.

I was back in the early 70s when I worked for a newspaper in Waltham, Massachusetts, and I will just never forget, the comment was, oh, you're going to make mistakes.

There are things you're going to say in the paper that just turn out not to be true, or you will misinterpret a statement by someone and inappropriately jot it down.

I didn't have a tape recorder like I have on my phone.

I, I was scrambling to write down notes and telephone conversations.

Did I miss words?

Yes.

Did I misinterpret words?

I did, we had a headline once because the city of Newton had been sued and I made an inappropriate reference to a legal term that later in law school, I figured out what it meant.

I didn't know what it meant.

Oh boy.

And it was inappropriate.

And that corporation counsel called me and said, you just completely screwed up.

Our whole perception of this because you used the wrong word.

I said, I thought you said that word.

He said, I word it wasn't implied.

It was interpleader.

And I just missed it.

It was a mistake.

And people are going to make those mistakes.

That's what corrections in newspapers are all about.

That's what responsible journalism does.

But having said that, I just wish we could have the ghost of Ben Bradlee come back, because when the president of the United States said, don't you dare print anything about Watergate and my involvement, don't you dare.

And the attorney General of the United States, John Mitchell, called Katharine Graham and said, you tell Ben Bradlee to stop reporting about that break in.

It has nothing to do with the Republican Party or Richard Nixon.

And Ben Bradlee said, I don't know.

I got these two young reporters who keep saying they're getting all this information that suggests otherwise.

it takes a lot of courage.

It goes back to the days of Peter Zenger, Peter Zenger, before we were a republic who said, I published something.

The colonial governor in Massachusetts didn't like it.

They brought him to trial and he was acquitted.

And that has been our tradition ever since then.

A vigorous public debate.

Will it be occasionally wrong?

Yes.

Will it be triggered by someone who can't tell the truth, aka Donald Trump?

It's going to be triggered by that as well.

But that's the public debate.

And it seems to me we need more public debate.

The solution to our issue is not less debate, it's more debate.

That's how we get to the truth.

>> I think the history lesson is vital, but I also think, Senator, you kind of dodged the question.

So I'm going to reframe it again for President Trump.

>> So you're doing to me what Gary wanted you to do to the president.

Oh my gosh.

>> I only use senator as an honorific.

If a guest is dodging the.

>> Question, are we on a plane?

Maybe.

I can't hear you.

I want to talk about.

>> Just just don't start calling Evan names now.

Yeah.

Be careful.

>> We do have a dump button.

no.

>> Go ahead.

>> No, I take the point, but go back to your Massachusetts reporting.

If you had made a mistake, for example, on a polling in a race, that's one thing.

Or if you reported a pollster's prediction and it was wrong.

Okay, what Trump is saying is the the press in Iowa was so eager to see him lose that they only published whatever would make him look like he would lose and would look like it would be injurious to his campaign.

And they didn't do it as a mistake.

They did it because they hate him, and that's different.

And that's actionable.

What do you think?

>> there's no proof that they hated him.

Where's the proof that they hated him?

They covered him when he came to town.

They published his press releases.

They covered what he said, even though what he was saying wasn't true.

I don't know how you establish the motive of the fact that a newspaper, the Des Moines Register, I.

>> Think Des Moines Register.

>> Yes.

Yeah, that's where Blair Claflin went back in the old days.

established that they were somehow motivated by ill this is the public debate.

They have a poll that says from a responsible pollster that Harris is going to win.

They published that poll.

I think you would be accused of being inappropriate if you didn't publish it, because it's a fact.

It's out there in the in the community.

It's it's a fact.

Was it true?

Did it turn out to be true?

No.

But it's a fact.

And it deserved to be part of the publication.

>> I think the more interesting journalistic question in that particular story, and we'll get on we'll get off this Iowa poll here in just a second, but that's a really interesting one.

And to me, to me, what that signifies is how hard this president has been to poll for the last ten years.

>> Very true.

Yes.

>> He is sui generis in that way.

I mean, it's really, really hard for pollsters to figure out the right mix.

And they've gotten it wrong in a lot of places.

And he's had established pollsters with egg on their face, not because they're trying to smear him, but because he is different and his coalition is different.

And for whatever reason, the methodologies used in the past have not worked as well with him.

That's the story to me.

What do you see, Gary?

>> Oh, I'm on that point.

Yeah, I agree.

I mean, if you go back to 2016, you know, the polling it and it hasn't gotten better, I know they've tried to reshape it some, but I think we still haven't really grasped the nuances of with this polling.

What is it missing?

On one other quick note, I want to appreciate Rick for his memory shows a committed journalist his memory of an era because I'm the same way.

I have several through the career that I wake up and think, God, how did I do that?

Even if it's 30 years ago.

even now.

So yes.

>> I mean, I've got some things.

>> Yes.

>> I yes, I mean, I've said on this program as a young.

So you talk about phraseology and words you might misinterpret or not understand the context of, I mean, I, I was not in my 20s, Rick, when I was hosting this program for the first time.

And I used a very anti-Semitic phrase thinking it was a not it had nothing to do with any sort of.

Bigoted sort of tinge to it, I thought it was a typical phrase that I had heard used before, and I never knew the context.

And I. I used it on the air here and the kindest people, the kindest Jewish listeners emailed me and said, I can't believe you know, the background of what you just said, and I want you to see it.

And I wake up sometimes today and going, I can't believe I said that.

But I also wake up saying, I can't believe how much grace people showed me.

>> That's beautiful.

I.

>> I have just one little story.

Then we go back to it.

When I was a newspaper reporter in Newton, Massachusetts, I wrote a story that was on the front page, big headline in our paper.

It said police compensation costs out of control, because what I said was that the cost of worker's compensation for the police department was an astronomical number, astronomical.

I used the word astronomical at the tail end of the article.

I said that state law requires that they get paid this way.

I just didn't think it was all that important.

The next day.

The next day, the police chief.

Well, because it was a huge number and I was like, you buried the expensive well, but it was so expensive.

The next day I go, I would go every morning to the to get the police blotter at the Newton Police station, there's the chief standing there with about 25 officers, and he proceeded to dress me down for five minutes.

Dollinger we give you the courtesy of coming.

We give you the courtesy information and you embarrass the daylights out of these officers who've been hurt because you failed to point out that state law requires that they get paid their full pay when they're on worker's comp.

I said, chief, I put it in the article.

He goes, you put it on the back page at the continuation page.

He screamed and yelled at me.

I bore that mistake forever for about a month thereafter, I would kind of sheepishly, kind of sidle my way into the police station, get the police blotter.

The sergeant in charge was said.

I was told by the police chief not to let you read it.

I will read it to you, was his comment.

Anyway.

But we we do make mistakes.

And my point is, this is all part of our commitment to a vigorous debate.

>> Absolutely, >> I my experience with journalists was Gary Craig for anybody.

They are fastidious in trying to get it right.

>> Well, and that's the frustrating, frustrating thing here is we're not even really talking about mistakes.

We're just talking about the media being the media and asking questions that should be asked.

And just this sort of pushback about name calling or whatever.

How dare you ask the and it's not even I don't think being negative, it's just doing the job.

>> Yeah, absolutely.

Right.

And when we come back from our break, we're going to talk about I've got a couple of emails related to this.

I think I'll direct it to Gary about how difficult the job can be to be a journalist in in times where you don't have access to direct information or maybe you're not on the ground in a place where something is happening, but the good faith effort that journalists tend to make here, and nobody, by the way, is saying people are perfect or people don't have biases.

I mean, the Cronkite thing to me over the years has been a little overblown.

People.

Well, that's back when journalists were objective.

I'm going like, do you think Walter Cronkite didn't have opinions?

The key is he he was very self-aware of those things.

But I find that most reporters are self-aware of their opinions.

Sometimes we get things wrong.

I don't know people who are out there trying to just wreck careers for the sake of it.

And even still, I don't know how it would be legally actionable.

So I want to trust that.

I think Judge Dollinger is making an important point here.

But the larger point about trying to suppress speech, suppress reporting.

Well, let's come back and I'm going to hit some of your emails on that subject.

On the other side, we're talking to Gary Craig, long time reporter for the Democrat and Chronicle, author of a number of books, including 7 million coauthor of The Prison Guard's Daughter.

He writes an excellent Substack that will someday be named.

Judge Dollinger retired from the New York Court of Claims.

Let's come right back on Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson Tuesday on the next Connections.

In our first hour, award winning journalist David Cay Johnston joins us talking about ways to make democracy more durable, especially during the modern era.

Then in our second hour, a group joins us to talk about new academic standards for climate change in New York State.

What are students learning?

What will they be learning?

We'll talk about it on Tuesday.

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>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson Mike wants to know what the FCC's legal case would be, what the actual law would be broken in this case.

So my judge Dollinger Mike wants to know if they actually sue to remove licenses over the coverage of the Iraq war.

Like what are they pointing to in the law here?

>> What they would point to is the public interest, public interest, the FCC is the guardian of the public interest.

But the case law is enormous about how broad the public interest is.

It's it's everything.

It's it's almost anything that you can think of is going to qualify as the public interest and to show that a commentary like Stephen Colbert's interview with the candidate from.

>> James Talarico.

>> Talarico is not in the public interest, is unfathomable to me.

And by the way, just one other thing.

it would be fascinating if we could think for a minute that the FCC might use its public interest logic to sue the broadcaster.

That probably has the least public interest involved.

Our friends at Fox News who seem to parrot nothing but the president's public relations press releases.

>> He's even been calling them names occasionally, if they ask a tough question.

>> Well.

>> Yeah, he went after the Wall Street Journal, which has suddenly taken the view that maybe the president should have asked for congressional authorization before he invaded Iraq, started bombing Iraq, or, excuse me, Iran.

Sorry, I get the wrong.

>> Yeah.

>> That was 20 years ago.

Sorry.

>> Gary, you wanna jump in here?

>> This will be quick.

There's something I want to read real fast, so.

And then segue off of it.

A primary purpose of the First Amendment is to enable the press to publish what it will, and the public to read what it chooses free of any official prescription.

Those who drafted the First Amendment believe that the nation's security requires a free press, and informed people, and that such security is endangered by governmental suppression of political speech.

That's not old.

That's from a judicial ruling last week.

That is.

And so to that's the ruling with the press passes being denied, unless you basically parroted the line at the d o d o w dot, whatever it is.

Now, you know, Defense Department where they they then basically end up giving press passes to the pillow guy and to conspiracy kook Laura Loomer and got rid of the people that were who refused and Wall Street Journal among them, and Fox News among them were not going to.

Basically, they wanted pre-approval, you know, whatever's going to be put out by the media.

DoD wanted pre-approval of it.

And it was so obviously ridiculous and unconstitutional.

And they got whacked by the judge last week.

That doesn't mean they won't do it.

It seems like they feel emboldened to do it, regardless of what the legal consequences are.

>> I hope, he answered Mike's questions as best we could.

There.

I got let's see here, Tim, Tim says covering a war is a difficult task.

In this particular war, there are not many reporters on the ground inside Iran.

It seems that Pete Hegseth wants reporters to spit out his press releases and call that the news of the day.

Hegseth has been deeply critical of the press as well.

That's perhaps not a surprise what they did with the Pentagon, Rick, is they you know, this version of the Pentagon under Secretary Hegseth wanted to control what people are putting out.

And that has led to a number of news organizations having their reporters pulled from Pentagon briefings because they're trying to control they're trying to embargo information.

and so, you know, I think number one, Tim, is making a point about the way that this administration is interacting with reporters.

I think Gary's right to say it's not unique to the Trump administration to try to control the media or try to bully the press.

And by the way, it's not unique to Republicans to do that.

That has happened in in local level, state levels, federal levels.

It's the level here that is different.

The actual threatening to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air to take broadcast licenses away.

I don't recall administration's in my lifetime doing that.

That's what feels different to me here.

So Tim is referencing Hegseth.

Do you see a different level of threat to free speech with this administration?

>> Absolutely.

It's the fear factor.

They want you to be afraid that you're going to be sued and that there's some chance that you might lose a valuable property like your license to broadcast, which has enormous value because it generates tons and tons of money.

But this is all about fear.

I have a simple political philosophy.

There are two ways to get people to do things.

One is tell them it's in their best interest and it's good for them.

And the second is to scare the daylights out of them and tell them if they don't do it, they'll incur a penalty.

This is clearly the fear factor, and I have two quotes that I would just use.

The first is, of course, from one of my favorites.

the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Don't be afraid of fear.

Be afraid of someone has a logical, positive argument that can persuade you.

The other thing is, and it's my favorite quote from Bismarck, and that is the first casualty in every war is the truth.

Nobody wants to hear the truth.

Nobody wants to hear the story about the six guys who already died.

Nobody wants to hear the story about the cost to the United States, which I think is estimated to be as much as $1 billion a day.

Nobody wants to hear the story of the 175 children who were killed in a bombing brought by the United States of America.

I think it's just fascinating that the president of the United States wants all of our allies to help them bomb Iran and take care of Iran.

And what are our allies supposed to do when somebody confronts them with the fact, oh, yeah, we should help the United States.

They're really good at killing 175 children in a school.

Those are the kinds of truths that should motivate the American public.

What people decide to do with it, individuals tried to do with it.

I leave that up to them.

But if it's the truth, we ought to say it's the truth.

If we have information that suggests it's the truth, we should put it out to the public and let the public decide.

>> There's certainly no evidence that the Americans knew that that was a school for Iranian girls when it was bombed.

>> Well, let's put it this way.

We have by far the most sophisticated targeting devices in the world ever known to the world.

And if we don't have them, we should.

>> But you can't be saying that they knew that was a school that doesn't know.

>> I'm saying that they pointed something at a target and a school was nearby, and their missile that was supposed to be directed to some other target went off.

Target killed them, and now they're acting like well, that's that's.

>> Maybe we didn't even do that.

>> It's part of the fog.

>> Of war, actually.

What they're really saying is that maybe Iran did that.

Maybe it was.

>> And that's where another tough question got asked to the president.

Can I follow up on that?

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> So whatever happened there?

And similarly, you know, folks are saying, I don't think it was targeted, but clearly something went terribly wrong.

And the problem with this administration, it's funny, I looked up the data.

It's been a year since the infamous let's let the Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg in on a chat.

>> And the signal.

>> Chat, and then they call him names, when in fact they should have been calling him honorable for not releasing any information until the military action had happened.

They should have been honoring his ethics.

Instead, they're calling him names, and by all accounts, really nothing has been done.

Or at least we haven't heard much about it.

And that's a whole different story, obviously, than killing 170 plus schoolgirls.

And that becomes the issue is when stuff like that, their question about it, they sort of Pooh Pooh it as if it's insignificant.

It's a cost of war.

>> Let's move on.

And that becomes you hope we can trust them to dissect this and make sure that this administration or the next administration doesn't do the same thing.

But history is telling us that we're not sure we can trust them to do that.

And that's the sad part.

>> Go ahead.

>> Rick Milei that's all you have to mention.

The United States government for years said it never happened.

When it was finally uncovered, American soldiers had slaughtered members, innocent people in a village in Vietnam.

If America had known about that at the time that it happened, we might not have waited till 1975 to leave.

We might have left earlier.

And frankly, we might have saved a whole bunch of the 54,000 GIS who died.

knowing the truth influences our policy.

And if we find out that those kinds of atrocities had occurred, the public ought to stand up and say, we're not going to do this anymore.

But history is filled with those examples, and it's all because the government we don't want them to know that we've slaughtered innocent people in Vietnam.

That would make us look really bad.

>> And the truth of that story is because of a dogged Seymour Hersh.

>> Correct?

Well, and honestly, the Pentagon Papers and Daniel Ellsworth, we might never have actually figured out the Vietnam was an enormous catastrophe.

>> I still haven't watched the Sy Hersh documentary, I.

>> Want to.

Yeah.

It's good.

Can I bounce something off?

Because I'm curious.

This is the danger.

I wake up at 130 in the morning and stuff's rolling through my head.

And.

And none of which is the name of my Substack, but there's.

But maybe that will happen.

So I wake up, I'm thinking about the show, and I'm thinking about the First Amendment.

Well, there's obviously in the First Amendment, there's the protections of the press, but there's also the protections of religion.

And there have been a number of Catholic priests and others and clergy who have, you know, the press is asking questions.

They have basically said, this is wrong.

Why are we doing this?

I mean, there's obviously governmental intervention into the media that we don't have with clergy.

We don't have with places of worship.

But if the administration took the same technique and said, we're going to padlock your place of worship because you are berating what we are doing here.

You're talking negatively.

Is it really that different under the First Amendment?

And what would the public say if that were the action?

Because essentially, constitutionally, it's pretty much the same thing in many ways.

>> Let me just follow up Gary's point.

There's an American guy named Bob Prevost who's sitting in the Vatican with a white hat on.

He's the pope.

Pope description.

Pope Bob Leo is his.

Yeah.

Now call him.

his comment is this war is immoral.

And nobody has suggested that.

Pete Hegseth and JD Vance, who's a Catholic, a converted Catholic, that they ought to go to the pros, the pope, and say, we're going to see.

You're going to we're not going to publish what you say.

We don't want anybody in the United States to know that the Pope thinks this is an immoral war.

The Pope can criticize Trump.

>> Well.

>> But the Stephen Miller.

>> And his wife said the Pope should stay in his lane.

>> Yeah, it's funny they would say that because there's a guy whose goal is to improve the quality of humanity and bring a message of hope to everyone.

It would seem to me that this is right in his lane, and I would just point out that one of the popes, Pius the 12th, was criticized for eternity and will be criticized for eternity because he knew that the Final solution was underway in Germany.

And he never said a word about it because he was afraid that the government of Mussolini or the government of Hitler would somehow persecute the Catholics and take its revenge out on him.

He he used a phrase I used on the schoolyard when I was ten years old.

He chickened out.

He didn't do the right thing.

This pope has said this war is immoral.

Nobody's suggesting that the pope shouldn't say that, and that it shouldn't be covered by the press.

>> All right, so let me read an email from Ted.

Ted says, Evan, do you think you could have some guests on your show who aren't Democrats?

There are absolutely no counter opinions being expressed during this episode.

This is the essence of what Trump is complaining about.

If you own a newspaper and all you want to do is publish anti-Trump content, you are free to do so.

The radio and TV Airways are owned by the people of the United States, not a private entity.

Free speech still applies, but with broadcasting there is the concept of in the public interest.

When you have broadcast entities that are using public airwaves to broadcast content that is overwhelmingly in support of one group or another, that is not an appropriate use of a public resource.

WXXI, in my opinion, overwhelmingly produces content.

That's anti-Republican.

Yes, there are occasions where your show and others have counter opinions, but that is the distinct minority.

I am a partial owner of the airwaves and your organization uses to spread biased and one sided opinions.

You are not serving my interests or the large number of people who share similar opinions to mine.

That is wrong and that is the essence of what Trump is going after.

You should educate your audience and perhaps yourself on who actually owns the airwaves.

WXXI uses and how the ownership nuance applies to this issue.

That's Ted amended.

First of all, Ted, you're welcome to come on the show, man.

I would love to have.

>> You bring it on.

>> I would love to have you on the show.

I want to say, Ted, a couple of things about your criticism, which I think is I welcome and I, I'm reading that email by choice because I want people to hear it.

First of all, it's not easy these days to get Republicans to come on this show.

Number one, that's a failure of me.

And I will own that.

Number two, that is a shift in how politics is done in this country.

I have had political operatives tell me, we don't need you anymore.

We don't need the newspaper, we don't need reporters, we don't need journalists.

We don't need your show.

We've got our own outlets.

We've got social media, we've got YouTube.

We can reach people how we want.

We don't want to be questioned and we don't need you.

I've been told that by, by the way, by Democrats too.

by people in both parties.

But I want more Republicans and conservatives on this program.

And to the extent that you don't hear enough of them, you can put that on me and I'll own that.

That's.

Go ahead.

Gary.

>> I want to add a number three to that.

Go ahead.

Is somebody that, you know, covered both political parties, and they tend to have good relationships on both sides of that aisle.

There is a number three, which there are many Republicans who do not want to come out and defend President Trump in his community.

>> That's a big problem.

They will tell us privately.

>> Yes.

>> I would love to come on your show.

I can't or I'd love to come on your show.

It's too much of a risk.

That happens a lot.

Ted.

I'm sorry that that happens this modern era.

The last decade has been a real grind, and I'm still looking for a better solution.

But in the last month, you've heard a basically every Republican in the local state delegation on talking about the state budget.

Everyone's had their own hour.

Every Republican is invited.

The next governor, the gubernatorial candidate from the GOP is invited.

Everybody is invited.

So if they don't trust me again, you can put that on me.

I'm doing my best here, but I'm not perfect.

Do am I a critic of the president?

Yes, I've been a critic of the president from the start, not because he's a Republican, not because he's a conservative.

I actually don't think he's very conservative compared to the small c conservative politics that permeated my own household growing up, watching my dad, I don't think he's very conservative in that way.

But do I want to hear more modern conservatives?

Of course, of course.

Absolutely.

Yes, Ted.

So follow up with me.

Send me an email.

You'd be welcome to.

Come on.

I would love to have your voice.

And we are working all the time.

Last thing, this program this hour would not.

In my professional opinion, benefit from someone saying that Brendan Carr should have the right to shut down broadcasters unless they line up and do the White House's bidding on a war in Iran.

I don't think that that's a good use of people's time, and I don't think there's many Republicans who would say that.

Rick Dollinger, a retired judge.

I wish you all knew how hard Rick works behind the scenes to bring balanced panels to this program.

We've talked a lot in the last year.

You are always putting Republicans on the list.

>> Evan.

I'll just give you an example.

We came in here and talked about the power of the presidency, and I brought with me two Republican retired.

>> It was a great conversation.

>> Because I wanted to make sure that all the viewpoints got heard.

No question.

I would love to have someone come in and say what you just said, which is prove to me it's in the public interest to silence the news media criticism of the Republican.

>> Judges you're talking about are not going to defend the White House wanting to pull broadcast licenses.

No, this is this is something that is close to monolithic in legal circles.

Now, Ted, are there a few lawyers out there who are, you know, sort of rabidly with Trump and maybe would defend this maybe and maybe I should have sought them out or will seek them out in the future.

But the broader point you're making, Ted, I want more Republicans.

I want more Trump supporters.

I do I want them on the show, and I'm working to do that.

And if you want to follow up with me, let's talk about what you can bring as a conversation in good faith.

I promise you that.

But if you if your conclusion is the show's not trustworthy, you can put that on me.

We're trying to be the public square.

This is not been an easy decade.

It's not been an easy decade.

>> Go ahead.

And just following up and you made the point.

I think Rick as well, you know that this is not something the concept of sort of corralling the media is not something that's solely Republican.

I mean, President Obama had a record of going after leakers with national security issues.

Far worse.

If you look at it from the media side than many of his predecessors.

I mean, he really did.

And if you go back through history, there's no shortage of Democrats and Republicans trying to use the power of the presidency.

But what we're talking about here is you guys both so eloquently said, is very, very different.

We're talking about something that it's hard to make any constitutional argument for in any format, in any sort of place you can.

I mean, it's just as the judge's ruling that I read, and every judge now is an activist judge who hates us.

And it can be a Republican appointed judge.

But that's always the pushback.

Oh, it's another activist judge who hates us.

No, it's a judge who prefers to follow the Constitution.

And that is just what is just being so ignored, what with what we're talking about here and with many of the other actions when it comes to the media that come out of this administration.

>> I want to thank our guests for for being here today and having a conversation about an issue that I think, you know, early on.

Judge Dellinger's point is probably correct.

The Guardians probably correct the threats from this administration, from Brendan Carr probably aren't going anywhere legally.

That doesn't mean that they don't have a material effect on what happens in newsrooms and in broadcast outlets.

And that's worth watching.

So Richard Dollinger retired from the New York Court of Claims.

Judge, great to have you back here.

>> Thanks.

>> We're always love it.

>> Free speech country.

We need a free media period.

>> Thanks for being back here.

Rick and Gary Craig retired public safety and criminal justice reporter for the Democrat and Chronicle, author of a number of books.

And if you search Gary Craig and Substack, you'll find the Substack.

It's great work all the time.

Terrible at retirement, and thankfully, he's he's a retired guy.

Still working.

Thank you for being here.

>> Thanks, Evan.

Always enjoy it.

>> Nice to have you here.

And from all of us at Connections.

Thanks for watching on YouTube.

Thanks for listening on our various platforms.

Thanks for finding us for being part of the public square.

And we're back with you tomorrow on member supported public media.

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