FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty told the Media Institute’s Free Speech America Gala that regulating broadcast speech is less like standing on a clearly marked cliff and more like inching across a frozen lake, never quite sure where the ice will crack. Speaking at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown, she argued that the FCC must protect First Amendment values while honoring its statutory duty to oversee broadcasters without smothering them.
Trusty said broadcasters live in a “unique regulatory neighborhood,” where the First Amendment still applies but the Communications Act adds layers of public interest responsibilities. Those include restrictions on obscenity, indecency, and profanity, guarantees of equal political opportunity, and bans on intentional news fakery. She pointed to decades of precedent, including the Supreme Court’s Red Lion ruling, as the foundation for these obligations and for the agency’s historic push for viewpoint diversity.
Yet, she warned, the danger today is not too little regulation but too much improvisation. As media platforms multiply, she said, the FCC should resist the temptation to treat every controversy as an invitation to tighten the rules. Instead, it should create conditions where broadcasters, motivated by audience trust and competitive pressure, choose to serve the public interest aggressively on their own. “Most broadcasters already take those duties seriously,” she said, adding that regulators should focus on enabling, not micromanaging, that commitment.
Her remarks landed amid broader debates over government influence on media. NPR is challenging the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in federal court, claiming it bowed to White House pressure when it revoked satellite funding. At the same time, FCC Chair Brendan Carr has floated the idea of a spectrum auction that would let some broadcasters trade traditional public interest obligations for more flexible licenses, a proposal that has sparked questions about how far deregulation should go.
Trusty linked her free speech message to innovation, citing 5G deployment, broadband buildout, and artificial intelligence as tools that can expand both access and expression if policymakers clear away outdated rules and coordinate globally. Free speech and technological progress, she concluded, must advance together or not at all.