Trump FCC Chair Brendan Carr to Attend WHCD Amid Growing Outrage From Journalists at Attacks on Free Speech
Source: MEDIAite
Apr 21st, 2026, 12:29 am
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr will attend the White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual dinner, Oliver Darcy reported Monday evening, part of a controversial effort to honor President Donald Trump’s administration that he described in his Status newsletter as “akin to a fire department inviting arsonists to a gathering aimed at celebrating firefighting.”
The WHCD was already facing blowback from journalists over inviting Trump as an “honoree” and CBS News hosting Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller as guests at their table. More than 250 journalists signed an open letter urging any reporters who attend to “forcefully demonstrate opposition” to the Trump administration’s “systematic, sustained, and unprecedented attacks on the free press” that were a “profound contradiction” of the purpose of the dinner, to serve as “a celebration of the First Amendment and the journalists who uphold it.”
According to Darcy, “Trump’s lapdog” FCC chair Carr will also be in attendance, courtesy of an invite from CBS News’ parent company, Paramount. “I am planning on attending,” Carr confirmed he would be at the dinner via text message after Status reached out for comment, but “not with CBS for it.”
Carr did not answer when Status asked him to confirm if he would be sitting at the Paramount table, or if he had received other invitations.
Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/trump-fcc-chair-brendan-carr-to-attend-whcd-amid-growing-outrage-from-journalists-at-attacks-on-free-speech/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Great statement by these journalists
Link to tweet
“The collective weight of the administration's actions - retaliatory access bans, coercive regulatory investigations, frivolous lawsuits against the press, defunding of public broadcasting, dismantling of international broadcasting, physical restrictions on journalists, personal verbal attacks on reporters, assaults on the media in official White House press releases and social media posts, the arrest of journalists, and the pardoning of those who committed violence against the press - represent the most systematic and comprehensive assault on freedom of the press by a sitting American president.”
The letter proceeds to list all of his attacks.
