I & I Editorial BoardIt’s been amusing to watch the left’s reaction to ABC giving the boot to Jimmy Kimmel.
Not because of its rank hypocrisy when it comes to censorship. Or its claim that firing a low-rated late-night “comic” means “authoritarianism has arrived.” Or the fact that it is far more outraged that Kimmel lost his time slot than that Charlie Kirk lost his life over things each said.
What’s most amusing is how blissfully ignorant the left is about how the news and entertainment industry works these days.
First, let’s dispense with the censorship ruse. ABC is a private company and is entitled to hire or fire whomever it wants. Networks do this all the time, usually without a peep of protest.
Last year, CBS fired veteran reporter Catherine Herridge – and seized her belongings – for unknown reasons. (She’d been investigating the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.) Also in 2024, NBC News fired former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel shortly after hiring her as a commentator. There was no handwringing about the death of democracy.
If Kimmel’s ratings hadn’t been in the toilet, the network might have been willing to put up with his flagrant lying about Kirk’s alleged assassin, and his plan to double down on that lie the next night. ABC decided he wasn’t worth the hassle.
But, we’re told, the real threat to free speech is that President Donald Trump – or more accurately the head of the Federal Communications Commission – is said to have threatened to pull ABC’s license if it didn’t can Kimmel.
“The silencing of Mr. Kimmel, following an explicit threat by Brendan Carr, the head of ABC’s regulator, the Federal Communications Commission, is the mask of ‘free speech’ coming off for good,” Michael Hirschorn ominously intoned in the New York Times.
Has Hirschorn been asleep for the past three decades?
Is he, and the rest of the Jimmy Kimmel sniveling crowd, really not aware that cable TV and the internet have largely supplanted network TV as a source of news and entertainment?
After Fox News fired Tucker Carlson (who had more than twice as many viewers as Kimmel), he took his show online and regularly gets bigger audiences on YouTube than he did on Fox. Comedian Kevin Hart has 281 times the number of followers on social media as Kimmel had viewers. Even if ABC were to go off the air entirely, it would hardly make a blip in America’s freedom of speech.
But what’s most amusing is that none of those freaking out about Kimmel understand why Trump had any leverage over ABC in the first place.
Hirschorn calls FCC Chairman Carr “ABC’s regulator,” but doesn’t pause to reflect on that phrase.
Vox.com laments that the threats made by Carr “show how easy it is to weaponize vaguely worded statutes and the executive’s discretionary powers against the president’s enemies.”
But Vox never bothers to ask why the president has such “discretionary powers.”
If it did, it would learn that it’s because of a nearly 100-year-old law that nationalized spectrum used by radio and TV broadcasters (which is no doubt music to the left’s ears) on the grounds of scarcity.
But that law also granted the federal government the power to decide who can use the spectrum, and on what conditions – one of which is that broadcasters are obligated to produce content that is in “the public interest.” The law, in effect, granted the FCC broad censorship authority over the airwaves.
The Cato Institute’s Brent Skorup explains that, as a result, broadcasters “can lose their licenses if they fail to operate in the ‘public interest’ — a vague standard that gives the FCC wide discretion. This is why broadcast television looks and feels different from unregulated services like HBO, Netflix, or YouTube.”
In 1943, the Supreme Court underscored the FCC’s censorship authority, ruling that federal law “does not restrict the Commission merely to supervision of [broadcast] traffic. It puts upon the Commission the burden of determining the composition of that traffic,” Skorup notes. “And the FCC continues to maintain its little-known ‘news distortion’ rule. This uncodified policy threatens a broadcaster’s license renewal or transfer if it is found to have deliberately slanted or staged news coverage.”
Lo and behold, Democrats have used the FCC’s broad censorship power in the past to silence political speech they didn’t like.
“During the 2004 election, several stations planned to air a documentary critical of John Kerry,” Skorup writes. “After politicians and advocacy groups threatened to challenge the stations’ licenses, they aired only four minutes of the film.”
Well, now that the left understands the dangers of having government ownership of the broadcast spectrum, will it come out in favor of repealing the 1920s-era law, privatize the broadcast spectrum, and let networks operate free of political pressure?
Don’t make us laugh.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
John Merline
I suppose it’s of interest that Carr was asked specifically about reports “going around” (NY Times) that he in any way pressured corporate to can Kimmel. Carr said he uttered not a word, but he was glad to see that it had happened. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the times to correct their error. If they even admit it.
They won’t do it. The people complaining the most about this always want to propose new rules, rather than getting rid of bad rules.
Whether the “public interest” rule is good or bad is open to debate. But trying to get around it by creating exceptions isn’t the right way to solve the problem. If it is really a bad rule, then the best solution would be to abolish the rule, not create exceptions to it.
As a 40 year Now retired Broadcast Executive, I am shocked that so many politicians and media commentators have so little knowledge of the role of the FCC, it regulations and how it relates to TV and Radio Stations. Your Editorial Board is so correct in its analysis. ABC, Nexstar and Sinclair own and are responsible for what is aired on their TV Stations. They carry the liability and the right to cancel a program on their platform.
THE SCUM IS BEING REINSTATED. HE DOES NOT DESERVE TO BE THERE AND ANYONE WHO WATCHES THAT HORRID MAN SHOULD BE ASHAMED.
Why? His comments were wrong on every level. A wonderful man, and husband, and father was assassinated and this man made disgusting comments. Shameful and shame on the network who reinstalled him.
Imagine being more upset on the cancellation of a hate filled, dirt-bag, no-talent late night TV host than a political assassination and still think you are a decent person.