A View from the Field: Holding Brendan Carr Accountable

We provide regular updates from the field as staffers work alongside our amazing allies and activists to create a just and equitable media system.

• Free Press organized a special-edition livestream the morning of the FCC’s September open meeting. Candace Clement, Vanessa Maria Graber and Julio Ricardo Varela hosted the livestream, which included interviews with in-house experts Craig Aaron, Nora Benavidez, Jessica J. González, Timothy Karr, Mike Rispoli and S. Derek Turner. Speakers discussed how Chairman Brendan Carr had pressured Disney/ABC, Nexstar and Sinclair to drop Jimmy Kimmel’s show and explored how he’s undermined the First Amendment throughout the year.
• Nora Benavidez spoke at an ACLU Georgia press conference about the unjust detention of journalist Mario Guevara, who was arrested while covering a #NoKings protest on June 14 in the Atlanta area. Even though the charges against Guevara were dropped, he remained in ICE detention for more than three months, primarily in solitary confinement. Free Press joined forces with the Committee to Protect Journalists, the ACLU, PEN America and other press-freedom groups to push for Guevara’s release, but in October he was deported to El Salvador in violation of his First Amendment rights.
• Nora led a session on AI at the Latina Empowerment Day conference, which Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE) hosted. Nora discussed how communities can use AI safely and advocate for policies that reduce harm around tech and surveillance.
• Nora also spoke at the National Academy of Sciences’ “Understanding and Addressing Misinformation About Science” conference. She gave a fireside chat about ways to use the law to build and protect healthy information ecosystems.
• Mike Rispoli moderated the Free Press Action webinar “Funding the Future of Local News: State and Local Solutions in a Time of Crisis,” which explored how public policy can address the disappearance of local journalism in communities across the country. The conversation featured State Rep. Chris Rabb (D–Philadelphia); Victor Pickard, the co-director of the Media, Inequality & Change Center; and Abigail Higgins, co-founder of the 51st and the first vice president of the National Writers Union. All three speakers underscored the need for public funding of trustworthy news and information. “Crisis is also an opportunity,” Higgins said. “We have an outsized opportunity and an outsized responsibility to create solutions to the massive information crisis.” Learn more and watch the webinar.
• Anshantia Oso co-facilitated the discussion “Black Women, Narrative Power, and Institutional Strategy + Sustenance” at the Feminist Funded conference in Washington, D.C. This strategy-oriented conversation supported Black women leaders and allies in understanding narrative harm and engaging in reparative practices.
• Jessica J. González was named to the inaugural cohort of the Democracy Policy Fellowship at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. To kick off the fellowship, she attended a two-day event with the other members of her cohort.
• Jessica also took part in a panel discussion about media and technology at the State of Latinos/as in Los Angeles conference. Panelists discussed how reporters in L.A. are working to keep communities safe and documenting police misconduct, ICE raids and the aftermath of January’s devastating fires. The conversation also examined the need for public investment in local nonprofit journalism.
• Timothy Karr took part in a panel discussion on the “new age of censorship” at the Journalism Ethics in a Fracturing World conference at the University of Wisconsin Madison. The discussion explored self-censorship, pressure from the Trump administration and the influence of corporate ownership and consolidation. “We have given so much control over our media systems to very powerful corporations that have extensive conflicts of interests,” Karr said. Panelists proposed strategies journalists can use to challenge censorship and avoid complying with an increasingly authoritarian regime.
• Diamond Hardiman attended the Association for the Study of African American Life & History conference in Atlanta, where she was the featured panelist in the discussion “Reckoning with the History of Philanthropic Institutions: A Case Study of What Is Owed to Black Communities.” The conversation explored how philanthropists have historically profited off the harm of Black communities and considered pathways to repair.