Two House Democrats sent a letter to every major cable provider essentially demanding that they stop carrying the conservative news networks Fox, Newsmax, and One America News, as reported by Politico.
Representatives Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.) sent their letter to every major cable provider, including AT&T, Verizon, Roku, Comcast, DISH, Cox, Hulu, and others, as well as Google’s parent company Alphabet. In the letter, they falsely described the three cable news channels as “misinformation rumor mills and conspiracy theory hotbeds that produce content that leads to real harm,” baselessly claiming that the channels “all aired misinformation about the November 2020 elections.”
The letter further asked the providers “what moral or ethical principles (including those related to journalistic integrity, violence, medical information, and public health) do you apply in deciding which channels to carry or when to take adverse actions against a channel?”
Fox and Newsmax both released statements criticizing the attempted censorship, with Fox saying that “individual members of Congress [highlighting] political speech they do not like and [demanding] cable distributors engage in viewpoint discrimination sets a terrible precedent.” Newsmax called the letter an “attack on free speech and basic First Amendment rights,” which “should send chills down the spines of all Americans.”
Both representatives are members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which will be holding a hearing next Wednesday on alleged “misinformation and disinformation” on television. The hearing is expected to target the three channels, which were among the only outlets to acknowledge that there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.