from the ignorance-and-fear dept

Trump FCC Proposes Vile New Trans Panic TV Warnings

Last month the FCC quietly issued a public notice saying the Brendan Carr run agency was demanding that the TV Oversight Management Board (TVOMB) create new TV ratings to alert viewers to “transgender and gender non-binary programming” and “the discussion or promotion of gender identity themes” included in children’s programming.

You are to ignore that the FCC has no actual authority to even be proposing this. The TV Oversight Management Board is an independent, industry-created coalition that manages the TV ratings system without legal influence by the FCC.

The FCC’s justification for these demanded changes are based entirely on the false claims of a bunch of anonymous “parents” who may or may not even exist:

“Recently, parents have raised concerns that controversial gender identity issues are being
included or promoted in children’s programs without providing any disclosure or transparency to parents. Specifically, the industry guidelines that parents rely on are rating shows with transgender and gender non-binary programming as appropriate for children and young children, and doing so without providing this information to parents, thereby undermining the ability of parents to make informed choices for their families.”

Of course these issues have only been made “controversial” by Republicans, who have taken brutal and ignorant aim at a very small segment of the population in order to actively hurt marginalized people and divide, misinform, and disorient the electorate. Like gay marriage was during the George W. Bush administration, trans rights are an effective wedge issue that exploits public fear, bigotry, and ignorance to redirect public attention away from things like, say, historic levels of corruption.

The idea that media and tech companies are actively flooding the population with a bunch of dangerous “gender non-binary programming” aimed specifically at children is a popular Republican lie designed to agitate and mislead, but there’s no evidence to support the claim. Still it pops up a lot; like Josh Hawley’s false claim at a recent hearing that Netflix is pushing trans-heavy kids programming.

Understandably the proposal didn’t sit well with organizations like GLAAD, which pointed out that it’s grotesque, ignorant, and dangerous to conflate gender fluidity with obscenities, drug abuse, and violence:

“And the Public Notice does not state how a change in TV ratings will impact gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters and stories on TV. Applying warning labels to programs with transgender and nonbinary characters and stories incorrectly equates them to programming with coarse and crude language, sexual situations, or violence. 

This makes life harder for LGBTQ Americans. It sends a message that the FCC can pressure the TVOMB to add even more ratings that stigmatize other diverse groups.”

A broader coalition of 40+ public interest groups ranging from Free Press to Public Knowledge were equally disgusted by the proposal:

“This is Carr’s latest attempt to shut down speech and shift U.S. public discourse to please President Trump. Television-program ratings are wholly outside of the FCC’s control, and the use of this public-comment procedure to coerce change raises constitutional concerns. The FCC should abandon this contrived and morally repugnant exercise.”

Part of Carr’s actual job at the FCC is supposed to involve protecting the public from corporate power, whether it’s a telecom monopoly that leverages corruption to rip off broadband customers, to a cable company using sleazy fees to jack up the cost of TV service. Carr’s not interested in that. He’s repeatedly given large companies free reign to engage in whatever consumer abuses they see fit.

Carr likely figures that the more time the public spends freaking out about nonexistent trans kids’ programming, the less time they have to realize that he’s been captured by industry to the detriment of everyone.

Instead of doing his job, Carr’s obsessed with being a weird little zealot and authoritarian lapdog, whose post-FCC legacy, if he has one, will be one of ignorance, censorship, distraction, and fear.