From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the Daily.

When Stephen Colbert announced that the government's increasingly aggressive stance toward late night,

meant that he could not air a planned interview

with the Democratic Senate candidate. It sent chills throughout the media. And then, this past weekend,

the chair of the Federal Communications Commission threatened to punish news outlets over coverage

of the war in Iran. Today, my colleague Jim Rutenberg explains how the White House is trying to shape media coverage

of its agenda and just how far it's willing to go in its crackdown on network television.

It's Wednesday, March 18th.

Jim Rutenberg, welcome back to the show.

Thanks so much for having me.

Jim, we've turned to you a few times on the show now when we have questions about the media

and free speech and government intervention.

And just this last weekend, in fact, Brendan Carr, the chairman of the SEC, threatened media companies by basically implying in a tweet that he would revoke station licenses that ran with coverage of the Iran War that he called, quote, hoaxes and distortions.

And between that and the dustups he's had with late night, most recently with Stephen Colbert. We wanted to have you on yet again

here today to explain to us what we are seeing play out on our television screens.

What happened over the weekend with Chairman Carr's tweet was part of a pattern. He's

been making threats like this since he started as a chairman at the start of Trump's term to warn

stations away from certain content the administration doesn't like. And this one was extra

alarming to people because it was a governmental threat against station licenses at a time of

war when information is at a premium where the public

really needs to understand what's going on. But one thing I want to say here is this veiled threat

he was making, it's really legally dubious. The FCC can't go willy-nilly grabbing licenses

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