“The First Amendment is a cornerstone of our democracy. The Commission does not revoke licences for broadcast stations simply because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes content or coverage,” FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel said on Thursday.
The FCC, an independent federal agency, does not license broadcast networks, but issues them to individual broadcast stations that are renewed for eight-year periods.
Trump claimed the debate was “rigged” because the ABC News moderators fact-checked several comments he made.
“They ought to take away their licence for the way they did that,” Trump told Fox News.
The Trump campaign and Disney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Rosenworcel, a Democrat, made the statement after senators Ed Markey and Ron Wyden had asked all five FCC commissioners to address Trump’s comments.
The senators, both Democrats, said the former president’s “threat to revoke an FCC licence over his dissatisfaction with ABC’s handling of the debate is a serious threat to the First Amendment and antithetical to the FCC’s mission.”
Republican FCC commissioner Brendan Carr said at a House hearing on Thursday he would always make decisions consistent with the law and First Amendment but would not answer if he believed the FCC had grounds to revoke the ABC licence after the debate.
In 2017, then FCC chair Ajit Pai, a Republican who served as chair of the FCC after being tapped by Trump, rejected Trump’s tweet asserting the FCC could challenge NBC’s licence after it published stories Trump declared were untrue.
“The FCC under my leadership will stand for the First Amendment,” Pai said.
The First Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
When reviewing licences the FCC must determine if a renewal is in the public interest. Courts have held that First Amendment rights bar the FCC from stripping a licence based on editorial decisions.
Rosenworcel said in FCC licence reviews do “not involve the government making editorial decisions about content. Doing so would be an affront to our First Amendment tradition.”