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“ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show indefinitely beginning [last] Wednesday after comments that he made about Charlie Kirk’s killing led a group of ABC-affiliated stations to say it would not air the show…
“During his Monday evening monologue, Kimmel suggested Kirk’s alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, might have been a pro-Trump Republican. ‘The MAGA Gang (is) desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,’ Kimmel said…
“ABC, which has aired Kimmel’s late-night show since 2003, moved swiftly after Nexstar Communications Group said it would pull the show starting Wednesday. Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s death ‘are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse,’ said Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division…
“Earlier in the day, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr called Kimmel’s comments ‘truly sick’ and said his agency has a strong case for holding Kimmel, ABC and network parent Walt Disney Co. accountable for spreading misinformation. He said the comic appeared to be making an intentional effort to mislead the public that Kirk’s assassin was a right-wing Trump supporter.” AP News
The left is critical of Kimmel’s suspension, arguing that the Trump administration is attempting to silence dissent.
“Kimmel’s critics are correct that he was factually wrong here in implying Kirk’s killer is MAGA: there is no indication yet he was a Trump supporter and, in fact, no evidence so far that he had any strong political views at all beyond being pro-gun and pro-LGBTQ. But you’re allowed to be factually wrong and on TV…
“Most of the people on TV are, including on pro-Trump news networks — which are, at least nominally, actual news reporting outfits and not late night comedy shows, and which just straight-up lied to their viewers the other day about a different political assassination, telling them the Trump-voting antiabortion advocate who assassinated Minnesota’s Democratic House Speaker this past June was actually a Democrat.”
Branko Marcetic, Jacobin Magazine
“Cancel campaigns, deplatforming, disinvitations — from Middlebury students shouting down Charles Murray to New York Times staffers revolting over an op-ed to Hamline University dismissing an art-history professor for showing images of the Prophet Muhammad — the left has had its turn at enforcing orthodoxy. But the difference is that the right now wields the machinery of government to enforce their reflexes in ways Democratic administrations have not done in any comparable way.”
Sean Illing, Vox
“‘Frankly, when you see stuff like this—I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,’ Carr said. ‘These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.’ Hours later, affiliate behemoth Nexstar—which has a proposed merger with another affiliate behemoth before the FCC!—had said it wouldn’t carry Kimmel for the ‘foreseeable future.’… This smells an awful lot like the government using coercive power to punish speech it doesn’t like, no?”
Jim Newell, Slate
“Consider this extraordinary remark from [Carr] in a recent Fox News interview: ‘We’re going back to that era where local TV stations, judging the public interest, get to decide what the American people think.’ At least we can’t accuse Carr of concealing his intentions. I don’t know whether that’s more menacing or more ridiculous: We will tell the TV stations what to say, and they will decide what you think… MAGA forces told us all along they wanted to crush free speech. Maybe we'll believe them now.”
Andrew O'Hehir, Salon
“Prior to assuming his current role as Trump’s go-to guy for intimidating the media, [Carr] was a fierce defender of free speech and critic of regulatory overreach by the FCC. ‘Should the government censor speech it doesn’t like?’ he posted on Twitter in 2019. ‘Of course not. The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the ‘public interest.’… The chairman’s turnabout tells us a lot not only about him, but about the status of speech in Donald Trump’s America.”
Austin Sarat, Salon
The right is critical of Kimmel’s comments, arguing that he was suspended due to market forces.
The right is critical of Kimmel’s comments, arguing that he was suspended due to market forces.
“ABC/Disney had every reason and right to suspend his show, given not only his conduct but the genuine outrage it triggered. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal’s reporting from last night, Kimmel was prepared to go out on Wednesday and deliver a ‘follow-up’ monologue that would have doubled down, accusing the MAGA movement of ‘purposefully twist[ing]’ his words. If Kimmel was about to make things infinitely worse for his network by digging in, I’m actually not sure what ABC was supposed to do except yank him.”
Jeffrey Blehar, National Review
“[Kimmel] used ABC’s platform to tell millions of viewers that Charlie Kirk was shot by a supporter, a claim completely untrue. Kimmel should have known what had been widely reported over the weekend: The killer is a left-wing radical. Kimmel could have corrected the record as soon as the indictment came out Tuesday, but he didn’t. He could have walked into the studio, looked into the camera and said plainly that he was wrong. He didn’t…
“The First Amendment protects free speech, even vile speech. No one is arguing otherwise. The Constitution protects Kimmel’s right to be wrong, just as it protected racists in the 1960s and radicals in Antifa marches. But free speech does not guarantee a primetime television contract… America deserves better from its media. We should not accept lies without correction… And we should not confuse accountability with censorship.”
David Bozell, Fox News
“This is an awfully bad time for a snide progressive comedian to ask right-of-center folks to put aside all their past differences and stand up for his right to keep lying about them without significant consequence…
“If you spend decades — Kimmel’s been hosting the show named after himself since January 2003 — ripping into a particular demographic of people on national television almost every weeknight, you can’t exactly be shocked when that particular demographic of people isn’t terribly motivated to come riding to your rescue.”
Jim Geraghty, National Review
Many argue, “Even if the decision to suspend Kimmel’s show was based purely on market considerations and nothing Carr said, the head of the FCC had no proper business saying what he did. The government shouldn’t threaten to use its licensing and other powers for the purpose of coercing TV networks into taking action against hosts who say things the government doesn’t like…
“Carr relied on the obligation of networks ‘to operate in the public interest.’ But it is counter to the strong public interest in free speech for the government to make threats against outlets that present speech it doesn’t like… The government shouldn’t have threatened consequences for Disney if it didn’t take action against Kimmel. If his comments made him too toxic for the network or affiliates to carry him, let market forces work. The government shouldn’t put its thumb on the scale.”
Paul Mirengoff, Substack
“If the Trump FCC targets more broadcasters, hopefully they will sue and win. But there is a deeper problem here: an agency that has broad power to [grant] or deny licenses to broadcasters is an inherent danger to freedom of speech. That's especially true when officials hide their unconstitutional motives more carefully than Trump and Carr have done…
“This is not a new problem. Only a few years after the establishment of the FCC in 1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt used the agency to target conservative broadcasters opposed to his New Deal. Later John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson used the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ - developed by the FCC as part of its regulatory authority - to target critics of their policies… the FCC should be abolished.”
Ilya Somin, Volokh Conspiracy
