Anna Gomez

Well, the FCC is the nation's telecommunications and communications regulator.

In broad strokes, our job is to make sure that everyone in the country is connected, for example, to high-speed broadband, to issue licenses for the airwaves like we do with your cell phones.

with satellites, and with broadcasters.

To protect consumers, such as our constant battle with robocallers.

Yes.

To ensure public safety has what it needs to do its job, usually, meaning through the airwaves.

And to ensure that innovation can move forward, whether it's by negotiating internationally, again, for the use of the airwaves, so that we can have new products and services.

That's correct.

Our authority really stems from our ability to license the airwaves to these broadcasters.

We have very minimal cable regulations, but for the most part, we only regulate broadcast television.

Normally, there are five commissioners, so we are a multi-member agency.

And the reason you want that is because you want to have a diversity of expertise and opinions.

And what commissioners do is they vote to adopt new rules or they vote to approve major mergers, which is really transfers of control of licenses.

And to propose new rules, the chair is basically designated to oversee the management of the agency, but the commissioners also often vote on management-type issues, creation of offices or lead staffing of the bureaus, things like that.

It started very early in the current administration, not just in the attacks on the press, but also the constant demands for revocation of licenses, for example.

One of the first actions that this agency took in the broadcast area was

Was it revived complaints against ABC, CBS, and NBC that the prior FCC staff, the expert staff, had dismissed as not raising valid complaints against them to the current law?

And that, to me, I saw as an action that was unnecessary, but also used to pressure those networks to change their editorial practices.

For example, one of those complaints was the complaint against CBS for the editing of the Kamala Harris interview that said,

Then candidate Chuck had sued CBS over and we had a invalid claim that it violated our policy against news distortion.