FCC Commissioner Gomez Calls on People to 'Stand Up and Speak Out' Against Trump Censorship

“Free expression is non-negotiable,” FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez told a crowd of journalists, academics and community members who came to Camden, New Jersey, on Nov. 13 to join her in a conversation about the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on free speech in America.

Gomez is the only FCC commissioner who’s speaking out against the White House’s relentless campaign to censor dissenting voices while clearing a path for right-wing billionaires to control more and more of our media — and transform news outlets into mouthpieces for the president. 

The First Amendment “marks the line between freedom and oppression,” Gomez said in Camden. “We must defend it without compromise.”

The First Amendment Tour

Since May, Gomez has been on a First Amendment listening tour, traveling to communities across the United States to hear directly from people about how this administration’s concerted campaign to chill free speech is affecting them. The Camden conversation, which Free Press and the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy and Law co-hosted, was the 20th stop on the commissioner’s tour.

“I became alarmed by the campaign of control and censorship that I saw this administration embarking on,” Gomez said of her decision to begin the tour. “So I embarked on this tour both to inform and to encourage people to stand up and speak out.”

Since taking up her position as the sole Democrat on the commission controlled by Trump loyalist Brendan Carr, Gomez has witnessed the FCC chairman’s efforts to strong-arm major media owners to replace the kind of honest journalism that holds the powerful accountable with Trump-friendly propaganda.

“Capitulation is the worst thing that you can do, but unfortunately the corporations are capitulating,” she said. “And capitulation breeds capitulation.”

Patterns of censorship

The White House crackdown against dissenting viewpoints has been in effect since the first day of President Trump’s second administration. But it came into full public view for many in September,  when Carr issued mafioso-like threats to pull the licenses of ABC affiliates because his White House boss didn’t like late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s jokes. It was the kind of chilling First Amendment violation that would have forced any previous FCC chair to resign.

Disney/ABC — and broadcast giants Nexstar and Sinclair — caved to Carr and pulled Kimmel’s show.  A fierce public backlash prompted the cowardly companies to bring the show back after a week-long suspension.  

But the Kimmel incident is just part of a pattern of censorship that links the White House and the FCC to a coterie of wealthy media owners who are far too interested in enriching themselves to defend their companies’ right to speak truth to Trump’s authoritarian power.  It’s a fundamental threat to our democracy — one that Free Press documents extensively in the Media Capitulation Index, which ranks the country’s 35 most influential media companies by their degrees of submission to the dictates of the Trump White House. The results aren’t pretty.

What we lose when we lose local media

In Camden, Gomez heard from a panel of local advocates and journalists. Free Press Co-CEO Jessica J. González moderated the discussion, which featured speakers Ayinde Merrill of the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, Kenny Miles of the Trenton Journal, Cristian Moreno-Rodriguez of El Pueblo Unido de Atlantic City and Vanessa Maria Graber, also of Free Press. Afterward people queued up to ask questions of the commissioner and relate their experiences and fears.

“This administration is using ‘serving your local communities in the public interest’ as code for ‘you have to say anything I want and you can’t say anything I don’t like,’” she said, adding that “forced speech” — including recent FCC efforts to bring media conglomerates to heel — is a violation of the First Amendment.

Gomez knows there is a powerful public constituency that the FCC’s GOP majority isn’t listening to. “What I have heard today was the importance of independent media, public media and local journalism,” she said in Camden. “We want community members engaged in their communities, and we lose that when we lose local control of our local media.”

Watch the discussion with FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez and other leaders — and donate to Free Press to help us continue fighting to protect free speech.