OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Democrat California Rep. Eric Swalwell has weighed in on the idea that Fox News should be banned from being seen by members of the military.
He was speaking to MSNBC anchor Katie Phang when they spoke about a campaign by a group named VoteVets to ban Fox News from military bases.
The host said that she is “worried” about the “harm” being done to the American people by “the disinformation and the misinformation pumped out of Fox News.”
“Has there been any discussions in Congress about maybe congressional oversight, regulations, maybe the FCC getting involved?” she said. “I know we all respect the First Amendment, Congressman, but should there be some type of gatekeeping that happens so that this doesn’t happen again?”
But the representative did not appear to be as in favor of a ban as the host was, saying that American television is important to military members.
“Nothing makes them feel more like home than their access to American television programming,” he said, as he admitted that Fox News is popular with service members.
But, he said, he is not certain that the network should be permitted.
“I don’t want to get in the business of telling troops what they can and cannot watch,” the representative said.
“But, if you have a news station that a court is going to rule is, in its evening hour, you know, perpetuating dis- and misinformation, I don’t know if I disagree with VoteVets, who was saying that we need to take a look at, you know, how this is being broadcast to our troops,” he said.
But he did warn that “I don’t think we’re without complete recourse.”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre gave her opinion on the idea of Fox News losing its license during a recent podcast and it made some waves.
In an interview with SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah set to air on Monday the liberal host asked her if Fox News should forfeit the ability to broadcast news because it “lies” to its audience in his opinion.
“Look, the FCC the way the law is right now, it does not cover cable news. We all know that. Broadcast news, though. It does. It, it’s called distortion. And it has to be you have to show that they said something false on purpose they knew was false and they could be sanctioned. They can lose their license on a network. It doesn’t apply to cable,” the host said, Mediaite reported.
“Do you think there’s any chance to explore the idea of expanding that, it would take an act of Congress, to expand the FCC’s mandate to include, just apply that, what that already applies to CBS and ABC and FOX on network to cable equally. It would apply to everyone, if (inaudible) did same thing that we know Fox did. Because if not, why would Fox not just keep lying to the American public without any consequence? I don’t know why they would stop this,” he said.
“So, look, I have to be careful. FCC is an independent agency, so we need to be careful here. But I get your point,” the White House Press Secretary correctly said, before hinting at her disdain for Fox News.
“You know, look, I think everybody has a responsibility, if you call yourself a news organization, to tell the truth, you know, and I mean, that’s probably as far as I can go. I think when you ask me about Fox, and I think that’s I think the question that I got on MSNBC with Alex was close enough to that,” she said.
“But to the question that you did, you just you just asked me. And in the best way that I can answer it is even Fox News leadership, in their depositions say, as we as I was being asked about the Tucker Carlson show, that it’s not news or truthful. And I think that tells you everything that you need to know. I mean, when the when the leadership is saying that, I think that tells you everything that you need to know and I’ll just leave it there,” she said.
