With Trump polling at new lows, FCC chair issues warning about ‘fake polls’

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With numerous reputable polls showing Democrats poised to make big gains in the midterm elections, the Republican chair of the FCC is advising local broadcasters to beware of “fake polls,” without specifying which ones he thinks are bogus.

Brendan Carr, a close ally of President Donald Trump, warned FCC-licensed stations on Wednesday, the same day two new, highly respected national polls showed Trump registering another record-low approval rating.

His warning also came one day after a self-professed polling firm admitted to being a “fictional entity” that fabricated data and fooled news outlets.

That’s a real — and infuriating — problem, but it shouldn’t besmirch the high-quality polls that are helping inform the electorate.

So which polls was Carr warning about? His X post didn’t say, and he didn’t respond to CNN’s request for comment on Wednesday afternoon, leaving the matter nebulous. And perhaps that was partly the point.

A group of former FCC officials called Carr’s message “part of an accelerating White House strategy to tilt the electoral playing field in the President’s favor and deny election results that don’t go his way.”

The former officials also noted that “the FCC has zero authority to dictate editorial decisions.”

Indeed, Congress has prohibited the FCC from trying to prevent the broadcast of any point of view. But the agency is responsible for licensing local radio and TV stations across the US and upholding basic standards, and Carr has repeatedly used that limited power to pressure broadcasters.

Press advocacy groups argued that Carr’s latest post flew in the face of the First Amendment.

“Literally every time he attacks the press, it’s because of reporting that was unfavorable to his boss, Donald Trump, whose gilded face he’s been known to wear as a lapel pin,” said Seth Stern, the chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Right now there’s a lot of unfavorable reporting about the Republican Party’s electoral prospects, given widespread voter dissatisfaction with the economy and the state of the country.

Trump has defaulted to calling the polls “fake” and has occasionally threatened to match his words with actions. “I’ve been fighting pollsters,” Trump said at a rally on Tuesday.

But if Trump has intended to chill reporting on public opinion, he hasn’t succeeded.

Last month, an Iowa judge dismissed the president’s lawsuit against pollster J. Ann Selzer, her polling company, the Des Moines Register and Gannett. A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team vowed to appeal.

On Wednesday, Carr claimed that this election season has brought “a significant surge in entirely Fake Polls and Suppression Polls designed to do nothing more than interfere with the regular functioning of the electoral process and alter the normal patterns of voter turnout and enthusiasm.”

He said “many journalists and broadcasters have been amplifying or airing” the polls, though he didn’t name any polls or names.

Carr then invoked the FCC’s power to penalize stations that violate the agency’s policies against “news distortion” and “hoaxes,” though those policies are narrowly tailored and rarely enforced.

“Broadcasters are advised to avoid engaging in News Distortions or running Broadcast Hoaxes by airing Polls that would violate their regulatory obligations,” he wrote.

Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner, immediately spoke out against Carr’s message.

“Pollsters who intentionally mislead the public should answer for it, but broadcasters who report publicly available polling data should never be punished when a poll is wrong,” Gomez wrote on X. “FCC rules on news distortion or hoaxes do not apply to a station that reports this data in good faith.”

Stern made a similar point in a statement on Wednesday. “News broadcasters have a First Amendment right to report polling data, even if it proves to be inaccurate, just like they have a First Amendment right to report on Carr and Trump’s own countless lies and distortions, even when they turn out to be inaccurate,” he said.

By inveighing against “fake polls,” Carr is once again embracing the rhetoric of the president who appointed him in 2017 and promoted him to chairman last year.

The timing is striking, since the midterm elections are less than two weeks away and polls show Democrats with an edge in many key races.

Many viewers and readers wonder about the reliability of polls, and the reality is that some are more trustworthy than others.

Earlier this week, the poll-tracking site FiftyPlusOne prepared an investigation into a group called “Wedgewood Polls,” which had released more than a dozen election-season polls.

FiftyPlusOne included the group’s data in its polling averages, but found evidence of fabrications. After the poll tracker asked for comment, Wedgewood issued a statement claiming it was an experiment “to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight, and overall low barrier to entry in the modern political polling industry.”

FiftyPlusOne co-founder G. Elliott Morris charged that “they are trying to cover up their fraud with the ‘we were doing a social experiment’ excuse.”

The American Association for Public Opinion Research condemned the fabrication on Wednesday.

“Professional polling organizations are transparent, ethical, and work hard to provide critical information to the public and other stakeholders. It is important that we don’t conflate fraudulent activity like this with legitimate election polling,” the association’s president Mary Losch said .

Even if it was just an experiment, it did real damage, playing right into the hands of public figures who want to sow distrust in even the most authoritative polling sources.

“Fake news, fake polls, they’re all fake,” Trump said Tuesday. He then added in the next breath, “I have some great polls.”

Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty Images

鉴于众多权威民调显示民主党有望在中期选举中取得重大进展，联邦通信委员会的共和党主席建议地方广播公司警惕“虚假民调”，但他并未具体说明他认为哪些民调是虚假的。

唐纳德·特朗普总统的亲密盟友布伦丹·卡尔周三向获得联邦通信委员会许可的电视台发出警告，就在同一天，两项备受尊敬的全国民意调查显示，特朗普的支持率再次创下历史新低。

就在他发出警告的前一天，一家自称民调机构的公司承认自己是一个“虚构实体”，捏造数据并欺骗了新闻媒体。

这是一个真实存在且令人恼火的问题，但这不应该玷污那些有助于选民了解情况的高质量民意调查。

那么卡尔究竟在警告哪些民调呢？他在X帖子中没有提及，周三下午CNN的置评请求他也未予回应，此事仍然扑朔迷离。或许这正是他想要达到的目的之一。

一群前联邦通信委员会官员称卡尔的言论是“白宫加速推进的战略的一部分，旨在使选举形势向总统有利的方向倾斜，并否认不利于总统的选举结果”。

这些前官员还指出，“联邦通信委员会没有任何权力来左右编辑决定。”

事实上，国会已禁止联邦通信委员会（FCC）试图阻止任何观点的传播。但该机构负责向全美各地的本地广播电台和电视台颁发许可证并维护基本标准，而卡尔却屡次利用其有限的权力向广播公司施压。

新闻自由倡导团体认为，卡尔的最新帖子违反了宪法第一修正案。

“他每次攻击媒体，都是因为媒体报道不利于他的老板唐纳德·特朗普，而他一直以来都把特朗普的头像当成胸针佩戴，”新闻自由基金会首席倡导官塞思·斯特恩说道。

目前有很多关于共和党选举前景的不利报道，因为选民普遍对经济和国家状况感到不满。

特朗普一贯称民调“造假”，并且偶尔威胁要用行动来证明自己的言论。“我一直在和民调机构作斗争，”特朗普周二在一次集会上说道。

但如果特朗普的目的是为了压制对民意的报道，那么他并没有成功。

上个月，爱荷华州一名法官驳回了总统对民调专家J·安·塞尔泽、她的民调公司、《得梅因纪事报》和甘尼特集团提起的诉讼。特朗普法律团队的一位发言人誓言要提起上诉。

周三，卡尔声称，本届选举季出现了“大量完全虚假的民调和压制性民调，其目的无非是干扰选举过程的正常运作，并改变选民投票率和热情的正常模式”。

他说“许多记者和广播员一直在放大或播出”这些民调结果，但他没有透露任何民调或民调机构的名称。

卡尔随后援引联邦通信委员会的权力，对违反该机构关于“新闻歪曲”和“恶作剧”政策的电视台进行处罚，尽管这些政策范围狭窄，很少得到执行。

他写道：“建议广播公司避免歪曲新闻或通过播出违反其监管义务的民意调查来散布虚假信息。”

美国联邦通信委员会唯一的民主党委员安娜·戈麦斯立即公开反对卡尔的言论。

戈麦斯在X网站上写道：“故意误导公众的民调机构应该为此负责，但报道公开民调数据的广播公司在民调出错时绝不应该受到惩罚。联邦通信委员会关于新闻歪曲或骗局的规定不适用于出于善意报道这些数据的电视台。”

斯特恩周三在一份声明中也表达了类似的观点。他说：“新闻广播机构有宪法第一修正案赋予的权利去报道民调数据，即使这些数据最终被证明是不准确的，就像他们有宪法第一修正案赋予的权利去报道卡尔和特朗普本人无数的谎言和歪曲事实，即使这些谎言和歪曲事实最终被证明是不准确的一样。”

卡尔抨击“虚假民调”，再次拥抱了2017年任命他并于去年提拔他为主席的总统的言论。

时机颇为引人注目，因为中期选举还有不到两周的时间，民调显示民主党在许多关键选区都占据优势。

许多观众和读者都对民意调查的可靠性感到疑惑，而现实情况是，有些民意调查比其他民意调查更值得信赖。

本周早些时候，民调追踪网站 FiftyPlusOne 准备对一个名为“Wedgewood Polls”的组织展开调查，该组织发布了十几份选举季民调。

FiftyPlusOne将该组织的数据纳入其民调平均值，但发现了造假的证据。在民调追踪机构要求置评后，韦奇伍德发表声明称，这是一项实验，“旨在展示现代政治民调行业的漏洞、缺乏监管以及准入门槛普遍较低等问题。”

FiftyPlusOne 联合创始人 G. Elliott Morris 指责道：“他们试图用‘我们是在进行社会实验’的借口来掩盖他们的欺诈行为。”

美国民意研究协会周三谴责了这一捏造事实的行为。

“专业的民调机构秉持透明、合乎道德的原则，努力为公众和其他利益相关者提供关键信息。重要的是，我们不要将此类欺诈活动与合法的选举民调混为一谈，”该协会主席玛丽·洛施表示。

即使这只是一次实验，也造成了真正的损害，正中那些想要散播对最权威的民意调查来源的不信任的公众人物的下怀。

“假新闻，假民调，全都是假的，”特朗普周二说道。紧接着他又补充道，“我有一些很棒的民调数据。”