Content Controls – Media & Communications Policy

July 24, 2025July 23, 2025 By Stuart N. Brotman

Let’s Not Create a Self-Censorship Wave in Comedy

Stephen Colbert’s recent announcement that he has been terminated from hosting The Late Show on CBS has been met with confusion and anger by millions of his fans. The press announcement indicated that the cancellation, effective in May 2026, was the result solely of financial losses for the top-rated series.

But there remains a larger fear that a contributing factor was to punish Colbert’s sharp political jokes that frequently slung arrows at the Trump administration, versions one and two. Put simply, both removing Colbert and eliminating The Late Show entirely after he departs may have a more lasting impact on other comedians now on air or in the future.

March 6, 2025March 6, 2025 By Stuart N. Brotman

Government Should Have No Role in Policing News Distortions

In early February, CBS News complied with an FCC request to hand over the raw footage and transcript from an October 2024 interview with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. The FCC has re-opened a closed file of a complaint that alleges CBS doctored the interview.

President Trump has already weighed in with his conclusion in a Truth Social post – CBS “defrauded the public,” he claims, and the network “should lose its license.”

March 30, 2023April 19, 2023 By Stuart N. Brotman

The Ticking Clock on Legally Restricting TikTok

Amidst the growing concern over TikTok’s massive availability in the United States, Congress now is ramping up its public scrutiny of that company, which is owned by China’s ByteDance. That foreign ownership has raised serious concerns regarding whether the company might constitute a national security threat that warrants an outright nationwide ban.

Such a ban, which has been advocated by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, raises First Amendment concerns that the government may not be able to justify under the constitutional strict scrutiny test of the Supreme Court that likely would apply in this case. It is unclear, and at this point unlikely, that a sufficient showing could be made to convince a federal court that the gravity of the national security risk in practice would justify restricting the ability of 150 million Americans to use the app for sending and receiving information.

January 6, 2023 By Stuart N. Brotman

Why Elon Musk’s Digital Town Square Model for Twitter Remains Elusive

When Elon Musk acquired Twitter in October, he sent a prominent virtue signal. Musk indicated that under his ownership, Twitter would be “a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.”

This notion was quickly picked up in numerous glowing tweets, then amplified by media worldwide. But we have learned in the ensuing months that there never was and never will be a digital town square.

November 1, 2021November 1, 2021 By Guest Author Robert Corn-Revere, Esq.

The Censor’s Dilemma

Pity the plight of poor Anthony Comstock. The man H.L. Mencken described as “the Copernicus of a quite new art and science,” who literally invented the profession of anti-obscenity crusader in the waning days of the 19th century, ultimately got, as legendary comic Rodney Dangerfield would say, “no respect, no respect at all.”

As head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice and special agent for the U.S. Post Office under a law that popularly bore his name, Comstock was, in Mencken’s words, the one “who first capitalized moral endeavor like baseball or the soap business, and made himself the first of its kept professors.”

July 7, 2021July 7, 2021 By Guest Author Gary Shapiro

Attacking Free Speech Doesn’t Just Hurt Tech: America Must Stay True to Its First Amendment Principles

The First Amendment is one of the cornerstone principles that define this nation. There is no such thing as freedom if we cannot speak freely. 

Today, however, our nation seems less interested in protecting free speech than at any time I can recall. Major advocates of free speech like the ACLU are wavering in their support of our First Amendment, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are fighting for the government to censor online speech.

December 10, 2020July 7, 2021 By Richard T. Kaplar

The Role of Targeted Advertising In Supporting First Amendment Principles

One can scarcely remember the time, only a few short decades ago, when life moved along without the array of personal digital devices that have come to define today’s culture. All of that changed, of course, with the advent of the Internet and the ability to access a burgeoning number of websites (which themselves were rapidly evolving).

Personal desktop computers, portable laptops, tablets, cell phones, and “smart phones” would fuel the tech revolution. Who could imagine that someday one’s phone, tablet, and computers would all be synchronized into a seamless whole. Or that millions of Americans would spend vast amounts of time engaging each other via something called “social media.”

March 14, 2018March 14, 2018 By Richard T. Kaplar

Time To Review Kid Vid Regulations

Under Chairman Ajit Pai, the Federal Communications Commission has made some remarkable strides in reviewing and moving to repeal a host of burdensome regulations that have outlived their usefulness. Media ownership rules like the newspaper/broadcast cross ownership ban come to mind, as do the Commission’s highly inflammatory efforts to roll back the enforcement of net neutrality under Title II.

The Commission continues to forge ahead. The next salvo may well be the initiative announced by Chairman Pai to review the rules governing educational and informational programming for children aired by broadcasters, known as the “Kid Vid” rules. Commissioner Michael O’Rielly has agreed to oversee the review of these regulations.

The story of the Kid Vid rules is a familiar one, at least in its broad strokes. Congress enacts legislation to address a perceived problem, in this case deficiencies in broadcast programming aimed at children (Children’s Television Act of 1990). The FCC carries out its obligation to issue regulations implementing the legislation (Policies and Rules Concerning Children’s Television Programming, 1991).

Continue reading “Time To Review Kid Vid Regulations”

October 16, 2017November 7, 2017 By Richard T. Kaplar

Free Speech Week: Much To Celebrate

Free Speech Week is upon us. Or, as the headline of a story about the week written by Amy Mclean in Cablefax puts it: “What a Time for Free Speech Week.” What a time, indeed.

Just last week we saw the president raising the specter of whether the government should revoke television licenses based on the content of televised news coverage. The same president has wondered aloud (via Twitter, of course) whether the National Football League should have federal tax benefits revoked if owners continue to allow players to kneel during the National Anthem.

Speech on college campuses continues to be stifled in a variety of ways, from disinviting controversial guest speakers to relegating the expression of opinions by individuals to out-of-the-way “free speech zones.” On some campuses, students are supposed to be warned by professors before controversial topics are discussed in class, lest the students be traumatized. Continue reading “Free Speech Week: Much To Celebrate”

April 7, 2015January 30, 2017 By Patrick Maines

Is This What Net Neutrality Is Really About?

Recent congressional hearings held in the wake of the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) net neutrality ruling provide a glimpse into what is so deeply wrong with this regulation, and why so many activist groups were behind it.

It’s an aspect of this matter of which you were perhaps unaware while the FCC was considering its regulatory strategy. Perhaps you thought net neutrality meant what was said of it: that it was intended to prevent the blocking or throttling of websites, or of “paid prioritization.”

Silly you. Actually, those were the interests of those companies — like Google and Netflix — that saw in governmental sway over the Internet commercial benefits for themselves. But what about those groups and individuals who had political or ideological interests, and who played such outsized roles in the deal?

You know, groups like Free Press, Media Matters, Public Knowledge and New America’s Open Technology Institute? Or what about the large grant-giving foundations, like Ford, MacArthur, Knight, and George Soros’s Open Society Institute that, in addition to munificently funding third-party net neutrality activists, directly lobbied the FCC themselves?

It should now be clear, even to those who weren’t paying attention earlier, that the primary interest these groups had, and have, in net neutrality is their desire to insinuate government in the regulation of speech on the Internet. >> Read More