Rand Paul: FCC chair had "no business" intervening in ABC/Kimmel controversy

The FCC exists (in part) to enforce a certain morality on public broadcasters. Whatever we think about that today, that was a core responsibility of the FCC when it started and that still exists today.

Yes, but the FCC has existing procedures for communicating concerns and warnings to broadcasters about possible regulatory enforcement and an entire rule-making framework beyond that. The new FCC chair so directly addressing a specific incident off-the-cuff on a podcast and making threatening statements about FCC action against a specific broadcaster over a specific incident was extremely unusual and a troubling precedent. And, to be clear, I'd say the same thing if it were the Biden admin's FCC chair issuing semi-veiled threats against Fox News. We don't want federal agency chairs from either party using podcasts to conduct official business or as a conduit for plausibly deniable (but nonetheless real) specific threats.

As a separate matter, it's long been clear the FCC was created to serve a very time, context and needs - most of which either no longer exist or have changed substantially. Most media no longer travels through the limited shared resource of "airwaves". The agency's whole charter is in need of a major rethink.