Markey, Schumer Slam FCC for ‘Double Standard’ on Media Investigations
Senators urge FCC to end CBS probe, citing misleading Fox News’ edits
WASHINGTON, July 21, 2025 – The Federal Communications Commission was probing one newsroom over selective editing, and ignoring another, Senator Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Wednesday.
In a July 16 letter to FCC Chair Brendan Carr the senators called on the FCC to drop its investigation into CBS, accusing the FCC of partisan bias in enforcement of media rules, particularly compared to its silence on a Fox News broadcast.
The senators pointed to Fox News’ editing of a June 2024 interview with Donald Trump, in which he expressed unequivocal support for releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files if he were elected president, stating “Yeah, yeah I would.” However, in unaired interview footage, Trump hedged on this answer.
Trump actually said: “I guess I would. I think that less so because… you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there.” He continued, “There’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world.”
Markey and Schumer argued that Fox’s selective editing, which completely transformed the meaning of Trump’s statements and misled viewers about his intentions to release the Epstein files, was “far more misleading” than the editorial decision-making in CBS’s interview with Kamala Harris last fall, currently the subject of an FCC investigation.
Since January, the FCC has had an open investigation into an interview with then-Vice President and presidential nominee Kamala Harris, which aired October 2024 on CBS programs' 60 Minutes and Face the Nation. Despite having won the 2024 election, Trump sued CBS on the grounds that the network violated the FCC’s little-used news distortion policy in order to aid Harris.
Markey and Schumer decried the FCC’s “politically based double standard,” but argued “an investigation into Fox News was not the answer,” instead urging the FCC to “end its partisan attacks on CBS and cease interfering with the judgement of independent news organizations.”
“The FCC should stop its partisan investigations into the news media and cease interfering with independent journalism altogether,” Markey and Schumer urged in their letter. “The FCC should not investigate or pressure either CBS or Fox. Editorial discretion lies at the heart of press freedom and should not be subject to government interference.”
While Trump’s legal dispute with CBS has been settled, the FCC’s investigation into the network’s editing of the Harris interview remains open. CBS has since provided a transcript of the interview, which reveals that the network’s edits did not alter the meaning of any of Harris’s answers.
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