{"id":448807,"date":"2025-12-15T14:28:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T14:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/448807\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T14:28:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T14:28:11","slug":"how-a-local-radio-station-weathered-trumps-media-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/448807\/","title":{"rendered":"How a local radio station weathered Trump’s media attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before Jimmy Kimmel<\/a>, there was KCBS.<\/p>\n

Just six days into President Donald Trump\u2019s new administration, the San Francisco Bay-area radio station KCBS-AM reported that immigration agents were in the area \u2014 driving \u201cunmarked vehicles including a black Dodge Durango, a gray Nissan Maxima and white Nissan truck.\u201d<\/p>\n

The brief story \u2014 also reported by other outlets \u2014 quickly drew the ire of conservative influencers who attacked KCBS\u2019 report as endangering agents\u2019 lives, sparking a deluge of complaints from listeners and callers.<\/p>\n

That was just the start of KCBS\u2019 troubles. The Trump administration\u2019s top broadcast regulator, Brendan Carr<\/a>, soon accused KCBS of failing to operate in the public interest and said he was opening an investigation.<\/p>\n

By targeting KCBS, Carr revealed his willingness to expand the Republican administration\u2019s offensive on perceived media foes beyond major broadcasters like ABC, CBS and NPR. In KCBS\u2019 case, the radio station took steps to mitigate the potential of drawing further attention from conservative influencers or Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, according to eight current and former station employees who insisted on anonymity out of fear of reprisal.<\/p>\n

KCBS demoted a well-liked anchor and dialed back on political programming, people said. For months, reporters were dissuaded from pursuing political or controversial topics and instead encouraged to focus on human interest stories, according to the current and former staffers. <\/p>\n

When journalists were given permission to pursue politics or Trump administration policies, some of the staffers said, the tone of the stories was heavily scrutinized.<\/p>\n

Doug Sovern, a veteran political journalist at the station, said he was sidelined after Carr announced his investigation. <\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Chilling effect\u2019 does not begin to describe the neutering of our political coverage,\u201d said Sovern, who retired in April. He said his retirement was not related to the controversy. <\/p>\n

FCC scrutiny has eased in recent months, and the station has been increasingly willing to tackle more topics that might draw attention from the administration and conservative critics, the staffers said. The station, for example, assigned a reporter in October to cover the No Kings Day protests<\/a> of the Trump administration, which the staffers described as a welcome change. <\/p>\n

In a statement, KCBS said it would not \u201ccomment on internal personnel matters.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has been no change in policy or editorial direction at KCBS,\u201d the station added. \u201cWe remain committed to providing our Bay Area listeners with trusted news, including our political coverage, that is balanced and objective.\u201d<\/p>\n

The FCC did not respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s enforcer<\/p>\n

In Trump\u2019s second term, Carr has emerged as a top enforcer of Trump\u2019s agenda, using his perch to take on one of the president\u2019s favorite targets: media outlets<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His threat to ABC in September that \u201cwe can do this the easy way or the hard way\u201d led to Kimmel, a late-night host and comedian, being briefly pulled off the air by parent company Disney over statements in one of his monologues<\/a> about the political reaction to the slaying of Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist. ABC and CBS settled what some experts said were long-shot libel lawsuits by Trump at the same time their parent companies had significant interests before the FCC. NPR and PBS affiliates came under scrutiny over whether they were crossing the line into commercial advertising.<\/p>\n

When the FCC later approved a merger involving CBS\u2019 parent company, the network\u2019s new owners committed to making \u201csignificant changes\u201d at the broadcast network \u2014 a move the FCC chairman praised in his statement approving the deal. And in November, Carr reshared a Trump social media post that called for comedian Seth Meyers to be fired from NBC.<\/p>\n

Al Sikes, a Republican former FCC chairman who served under President George H.W. Bush, said Carr was using \u201cmobster\u201d tactics.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing right now is new boundaries that are being set on the exercise of authority: punishing those that you don\u2019t like and ensconcing those that you do,\u201d Sikes said in an interview.<\/p>\n

ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS and NPR did not respond to requests for comment. <\/p>\n

Since February, the White House has blocked The Associated Press\u2019 access<\/a> to events after the wire service said it would continue referring to the Gulf of Mexico in some of its copy. Trump had signed an executive order renaming the body of water the Gulf of America. The AP filed suit over the restrictions, and a federal judge ordered the White House in April to restore the AP\u2019s full access to cover presidential events as part of the press pool. The judge\u2019s order was put on hold while the White House appeals it.<\/p>\n

KCBS in the crosshairs<\/p>\n

KCBS has a storied history. It was one of the earliest radio stations ever licensed. Owned by CBS for nearly 70 years, it helped pioneer the 24-hour news radio format. CBS sold its radio properties in 2017 to Entercom, which later renamed itself Audacy. KCBS remains a broadcast affiliate of CBS News Radio. <\/p>\n

The proliferation of digital content has hit the radio industry hard. Audacy recently survived Chapter 11 bankruptcy and had only been saved by a major investment from a firm owned by George Soros, a liberal donor and frequent Republican target. That investment was approved by the FCC under President Joe Biden\u2019s Democratic administration. Some conservatives, including Carr, had criticized the previous FCC leadership for failing to scrutinize the deal more closely.<\/p>\n

In going after KCBS, Carr relied on a letter of inquiry, the first formal step in opening an FCC investigation. Broadcasters are regulated by the agency, and it has the authority to issue admonitions, or fines. In rare cases, it can revoke broadcast licenses.<\/p>\n

After Carr\u2019s threat, staffers involved in the story were summoned to meetings with lawyers hired by Audacy. The attorneys scoured employee social media posts and grilled some on whether they had any political bias, current and former staff said.<\/p>\n

The station\u2019s news director, Jennifer Seelig, sits on the board of the Radio Television Digital News Association, which gives out a prominent First Amendment award. She told people that business considerations required the station to avoid angering the FCC, current and former staffers said.<\/p>\n

Seelig did not respond to requests for an interview.<\/p>\n

Veteran reporter demoted<\/p>\n

Bret Burkhart, who first read the report on the immigration action over the air, was demoted from his anchor position to a less prestigious reporting gig. After a few months, he left the station for a new job, according to current and former staffers. Burkhart was a well-regarded Bay Area radio personality, with more than a dozen top journalism awards over the course of his long career.<\/p>\n

Burkhart\u2019s colleagues were perplexed that the station would discipline anyone for reporting on the raids, especially because the federal agents were not operating undercover and the information they based the report on came from several local politicians.<\/p>\n

The description of immigration agents in unmarked cars \u201cis newsworthy, particularly since Trump\u2019s administration has a history of sending in federal agents while disguising what agencies they\u2019re with,\u201d said Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland and former on-air correspondent at CNN and ABC.<\/p>\n

Sovern, an award-winning political reporter who worked for The New York Times and the AP, said he struggled to get stories published.<\/p>\n

In the weeks after the immigration story, Seelig asked Sovern to cancel an interview he had set up with California gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter out of fear she would say something negative about Trump, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m disappointed that a news organization once renowned and acclaimed for its diligent pursuit of the truth, no matter where it led and no matter whose feathers it ruffled, backed away from its core mission out of fear and economic insecurity,\u201d Sovern said. \u201cThat\u2019s not the KCBS I knew, and gave 35 years of my professional life to, and it\u2019s a shame the last months had to end in such ignoble fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP writers Brian Slodysko and Michael Biesecker contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before Jimmy Kimmel, there was KCBS. Just six days into President Donald Trump\u2019s new administration, the San Francisco…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":448808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[38095,2122,10762,1578,51396,206411,64,276,19719,1226,69,206412,171,18320,57,196126,125773,2055,86,47596,409,192955,206409,11171,82,151145,362,181121,206410,975,48936,80,22014,422,9060,57016,15466,67,370,132,68,93],"class_list":{"0":"post-448807","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-ap-investigations","9":"tag-arts-and-entertainment","10":"tag-assault","11":"tag-associated-press","12":"tag-brendan-carr","13":"tag-bret-burkhart","14":"tag-business","15":"tag-california","16":"tag-charlie-kirk","17":"tag-conservatism","18":"tag-donald-trump","19":"tag-doug-sovern","20":"tag-entertainment","21":"tag-federal-communications-commission","22":"tag-general-news","23":"tag-george-h-w-bush","24":"tag-george-soros","25":"tag-government-and-politics","26":"tag-government-policy","27":"tag-gulf-of-mexico","28":"tag-immigration","29":"tag-industry-regulation","30":"tag-jennifer-seelig","31":"tag-jimmy-kimmel","32":"tag-joe-biden","33":"tag-katie-porter","34":"tag-legal-proceedings","35":"tag-local-news-for-apple","36":"tag-mark-feldstein","37":"tag-music","38":"tag-national-public-radio","39":"tag-politics","40":"tag-public-media","41":"tag-radio","42":"tag-retail-and-wholesale","43":"tag-san-francisco-bay","44":"tag-seth-meyers","45":"tag-united-states","46":"tag-united-states-government","47":"tag-unitedstates","48":"tag-us","49":"tag-washington-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}