Conservative advocacy groups and ABC might make strange bedfellows, but right-leaning organizations are going to bat for the Disney-owned network in its battle with the Federal Communications Commission.FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in April that eight ABC-owned stations must prove they have been operating in the public interest as part of an ongoing look at Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion [DEI] practices. Carr has also said ABC should have aired President Donald Trump's primetime address last week, suggesting the decision to skip it was not in the public interest. A group of conservative and free-market organizations, including Center for Individual Freedom, Citizens Against Government Waste and Americans for Tax Reform, penned a letter to Carr on Wednesday urging the chairman to avoid setting a precedent that could hurt non-liberal organizations in the future. FCC CHAIR SUGGESTS ABC SKIPPING TRUMP'S SPEECH WILL FACTOR IN LICENSE RENEWAL DECISIONABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and "The View" co-host Whoopi Goldberg.(JC Olivera/Variety via Getty Images; Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival)"From media and broadband to the space economy, your deregulatory record is helping unleash investment and growth, and we are grateful for your leadership in getting government out of the way.
It is in that same spirit that we respectfully urge the Federal Communications Commission to preserve the well-established, routine, predictable, and presumptive nature of broadcast license renewal," the letter, which has been obtained by Fox News Digital, stated. "We ask that the FCC avoid steps that would transform renewal from the largely ministerial process Congress designed into a discretionary checkpoint that would invite the politicization that conservatives, free-market advocates and others have long condemned," the letter continued."Our concern is that establishing precedents of non-routine renew...