Opinion: Anna Gomez, Queen of Convenient Outrage
How Come the FCC Democrat Never Talks about Fox29 or Standard General-TEGNA?
WASHINGTON, Aug. 1, 2025 – Anna Gomez is the Queen of Convenient Outrage. In recent months, Gomez, the FCC’s only Democrat at the Commission level, has been on a scorched-earth crusade making one unsupported accusation after another attacking the ethics of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. Like so many tedious partisan operatives in Washington, D.C., Gomez has been gripped by a bad case of selective amnesia.
Let’s roll the video tape. From July 2023 to January 2025, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks and Gomez (for 83% of that time) had a Democratic-majority bazooka pointed at the head of the Fox29 TV station in Philadelphia over Fox News Channel’s coverage of the 2020 presidential election. Fox29, controlled by the Murdoch family along with FNC, was facing a formidable operating license revocation challenge led by the Media and Democracy Project (MAD) with the support of former Disney/Fox executive Preston Padden. He organized an elite group of retired telecom policy alumni to help with the cause. And let’s not forget attorney Floyd Abrams – MR. FIRST AMENDMENT – who effectively said to Rosenworcel, “Go ahead, yank the license!”
Gomez joined the FCC in September 2023. Over the ensuing 15 months, she said absolutely NOTHING about the threat to Fox29’s First Amendment rights posed by the FCC’s Democratic majority in the heat of a presidential campaign. Again, not a peep. But if Carr suggests NPR might be selling ads in possible violation of federal law, that’s a First Amendment inferno in the eyes of the cloyingly hyperbolic Gomez.
Here’s another one – Rosenworcel’s handling or mishandling of Standard General’s attempt to buy TEGNA in 2022-23 for $8.6 billion. Hers was a highly dubious performance influenced by rich donations – $307,400, to be exact – to Nancy Pelosi-connected Democratic political committees by media baron Byron Allen. Allen’s eponymous Allen Media Group wanted to kneecap SG’s effort, led by scrappy Korean immigrant Soo Kim, to acquire TEGNA because Allen had been pushed out of the deal, which tends to happen to low bidders in a capitalist economy. Eventually, Speaker Pelosi sent Rosenworcel a letter telling her in so many words to kill the deal and – surprise – the Chairwoman, a Biden appointee, obliged after torturing Kim with endless bureaucratic process delays grounded in specious hooey.
This Democratic scandal was described by some as bribery in broad daylight. “It sure looks like the former House Speaker lobbied the FCC Chair to scuttle a business deal in a way that would promote the business interests of a major Democratic donor,” the Wall Street Journal opined. (Kim, by the way, has a racial discrimination case against Rosenworcel that is still active in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.)
Has Gomez ever addressed the denial of due process and other Constitutional harms that Rosenworcel inflicted on Kim’s buyout effort? Answer: No. But this much is loud and clear: When Anna Gomez gets a bad case of the forgets, nobody has to sit around waiting for the Spanish translation.