JUST IN: FCC Chair Brendan Carr has warned that broadcasters airing fabricated polls designed to disrupt elections and manipulate voters could violate their federal license obligations. Carr said in an Oct. 21 post on X that “many journalists and broadcasters have been amplifying or airing these Polls without regard to basic journalistic ethics and without informing the public that those Polls lack a scientific, accurate, or even real basis.” He stressed that broadcasters’ federal licenses prohibit them from engaging in news distortion or promoting broadcast hoaxes. He added that they must comply with their public-interest obligations, noting that the country benefits when Americans can trust the media to report the news fairly and accurately. Hoax Poll Carr did not name specific polls or outlets, but one day earlier, a group called Wedgewood Polling said it had fabricated data in an experiment testing media scrutiny. The group said its surveys often had no real data behind them yet were still included in poll averages by The New York Times and some other outlets.