Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr warned broadcasters Wednesday to “comply with their public interest obligations” when it comes to what he called a “significant surge” of “Fake Polls and Suppression Polls.”
“Many journalists and broadcasters have been amplifying or airing these Polls without regard to basic journalistic ethics and without informing the public that those Polls lack a scientific, accurate, or even real basis,” Carr wrote in a post on X.
Carr said the FCC takes the issue seriously, and that broadcasters are prohibited by the terms of their federal licenses from engaging in “News Distortion or promoting Broadcast Hoaxes.”
And he urged broadcasters to follow federal license guidelines by airing polls with relevant context and information.
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“It is important that broadcasters comply with their public interest obligations,” Carr wrote. “After all, the country benefits greatly when Americans can trust and rely on the media to report the news fairly and accurately.”
Carr said the so-called fake polls are meant to interfere with the electoral process and alter “voter turnout and enthusiasm.”
Last year, Carr threatened ABC over comments late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel made after conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s murder. Kimmel was briefly pulled off the air afterward. Other media organizations have also found themselves in the crosshairs of Trump and the FCC.
Anna Gomez, the only Democrat among FCC’s three commissioners, pushed back on Carr’s suggestion that broadcasters should be punished for reporting misleading data.
“Pollsters who intentionally mislead the public should answer for it, but broadcasters who report publicly available polling data should never be punished when a poll is wrong,” she wrote on X. “FCC rules on news distortion or hoaxes do not apply to a station that reports this data in good faith.”
Carr didn’t name the networks or journalists that prompted his post, but it came a day after news website FiftyPlusOne reported that it caught election survey company Wedgewood Polls fabricating polling data.
The pollsters said Tuesday in a statement that the fake data was a part of an “experiment” meant to expose the lack of oversight on polling credibility and methodology.
“Wedgewood Polling was never intended to sway an election or permanently mislead the public; it was designed as a wake-up call,” the statement said. “If a fictional entity run by a small group of industry veterans can be integrated into major polling averages and cited by major news organizations, the standards for how polling data is vetted, aggregated, and reported must change.”
Wedgewood said its polls had been cited as a credible source in major news outlets including The New York Times, MS NOW, Decision Desk HQ, FiftyPlusOne and Vote Hub.
Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow said in a post on X that Wedgewood’s polls that showed her trailing behind her opponent led to decreased donations, prompted calls from reporters to drop out of the race and discouraged campaign volunteers.
While the experiment proved that “polling is broken,” she said, it only added to a long list of things that can make voters skeptical of elections.
“I hope Democrats are ready to blow up the system with campaign finance and transparency reforms,” she wrote. “Trust is already at an all-time low. We don’t get out of this mess without rebuilding trust. And media — who loves to ride the drama of a pollercoaster — needs to take a hard look at what’s legitimate and what’s not.”
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