Disney is fighting the FCC’s latest demands after the agency opened an investigation tied to a Disney-owned station in Texas that carried The View. Anna M. Gomez, the lone Democrat on the commission, said the move is part of a broader effort to pressure broadcasters the administration does not like.
Gomez’s criticism lands at a sensitive moment. Her term ends on June 30, and the FCC now has only three commissioners after two resigned last year, leaving the agency with less internal friction just as it takes on one of the country’s biggest media companies. Disney owns only eight stations nationwide, but ABC programming reaches viewers through hundreds of independently owned affiliates across hundreds of markets.
The complaint at the center of the fight did not appear to arise on its own. Gomez said the FCC went to nonowned affiliates in the market and asked them to file complaints, then used those filings as the basis to open an investigation against the Disney-owned station. The Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico appeared on that episode of The View, and the agency has said it is acting on an alleged violation.
Gomez said that sequence makes the case look manufactured. “We want you to file with us, and we’re not going to hold it against you because of this alleged violation,” she said, adding, “That to me is a setup.” She called the move retaliation for Disney’s viewpoints, said it amounts to censorship, and argued that the FCC is weaponizing its authority to shut down voices it does not like. She also said the administration cannot tolerate anything critical of it.
The clash goes beyond one station or one episode of The View. Gomez said the FCC chair, Brendan Carr, is behaving egregiously and that the agency is challenging the First Amendment rights of broadcasters, talent and the press. Disney may be small in station ownership, but the dispute touches a much larger web of ABC affiliates that keep the network on the air in market after market. What remains unresolved is whether the FCC will push the inquiry further and seek penalties, or whether this fight becomes the line broadcasters use to test how far regulatory pressure can go.
