If you follow media policy closely like I do, this week probably felt fragmented.

On one track, there’s an ongoing Federal Communications Commission rulemaking with a deceptively technical name: the “2022 Quadrennial Regulatory Review – Review of the Commission’s Broadcast Ownership Rules,” required by Congress under Section 202 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. It’s called the 2022 review because the FCC failed to complete it on time. The process was delayed for years by legal challenges to a prior review. The Commission finally issued its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in late September, reopening the question of whether long-standing limits on broadcast consolidation should be loosened or eliminated. Initial public comments were due on December 17, 2025.

It’s a process that rarely breaks out of policy circles. But, it quietly shapes who owns local news, how concentrated media markets become, and whether local journalism remains independent.

Full disclosure:

I signed on with an organization, Democracy Forward, to submit comments in this proceeding. That experience has only underscored why the institutional posture of the FCC - independent or otherwise - matters so much right now.

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On another seemingly separate track, FCC Chair Brendan Carr went before Congress this week and said something that, at first blush, sounded like inside-baseball administrative law: the FCC, he claimed, is “not formally” an independent agency. Hours later, the word independent disappeared from the FCC’s own website.

Sara Fischer, media correspondent for Axios, was the first to report on X that “independent” was removed from the FCC website.

Thais moment received coverage in policy newsletters, trade publications, and communication law and policy circles. It got a few short hits on cable news. But today, it risks fading.

Meanwhile, on a third track, President Donald Trump continues to post on Truth Social about broadcast licenses, suggesting that television networks should be “properly licensed” and pay for using public airwaves. That rhetoric circulated widely, excited his base, and after a few days, it was dismissed by many as bluster.

Seen separately, each story feels manageable. Seen together, they are something else entirely.

What Carr’s testimony signals - intentionally or not - is an embrace of a unitary executive view of media regulation: the idea that the FCC is less a congressionally mandated insulated expert body and more an extension of presidential authority under Article II. That framing matters because the FCC sits at a unique pressure point. It doesn’t just regulate spectrum and ownership; it regulates the conditions under which broadcast journalism exists.

The First Amendment sharply limits what the government can do to the press. But history shows that press freedom is often eroded not through direct censorship, but through regulatory leverage: investigations, delays, threats of “additional work,” and uncertainty about future approvals. You don’t have to revoke a license to chill speech.

You just have to make examples.

That’s why the Quadrennial Review matters here. Ownership rules determine whether local journalism remains pluralistic or becomes concentrated in fewer corporate hands. As we learned recently, these hands that are more vulnerable to political pressure. Weakening those rules at the same time that the FCC’s independence is rhetorically and institutionally softened is not coincidence - it’s alignment.

This is where broader legal theory enters the picture. In recent years, some conservative scholars have advanced versions of “common good constitutionalism” or post-liberal constitutionalism. These are frameworks that reject neutrality and openly argue that executive power should be used to shape culture, morality, and social order. In those theories, independent agencies are a problem, not a feature. Constraint is seen as weakness, and neutrality as an illusion.

If you believe that framework, then an FCC that pressures broadcasters for content deemed harmful to the “public interest” - as judged by President Trumo - is not a constitutional danger but rather a tool.

That’s why this moment deserves more attention than it’s getting in the news.

Not because any single action is unprecedented and not because a license is about to be pulled tomorrow. But instead, it’s because the infrastructure of pressure is being normalized in plain sight across agencies, rhetoric, and regulatory processes that most people never see.

The press doesn’t lose its freedom all at once. It loses it when independence becomes optional and when oversight becomes loyalty. Today, regulation is becoming a warning signal instead of a safeguard.

If you step back and look at what’s happening right now - not story by story, but as a system, it’s hard not to think: pay attention. Something important is being redefined.

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