WASHINGTON—The controversy over ABC’s decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel, continues to heat up, with FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez blasting ABC's decision to suspend Kimmel’s show as “a shameful show of cowardly corporate capitulation by ABC that has put the foundation of the First Amendment in danger.”
The Writers Guild of America and the ACLU also issued strong statements attacking ABC, the FCC and the decision to suspend the program.
ABC dropped the program shortly after FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatened to revoke broadcast licenses of stations airing the show and Nexstar announced it would preempt the show on its 32 ABC affiliates that reach 126 million U.S. homes.
Meanwhile, the conservative Center for American Rights sent a supplemental complaint to the FCC attacking Kimmel, ABC and the KABC broadcast station for violating FCC "pubic interest" rules.
In the last year, the group has filed several complaints with the FCC asking the agency to investigate political bias at affiliates of broadcast networks that have provided coverage that is critical of the President Trump,
The group also filed a FCC complaint against Kimmel in early September. In its newest Sept. 17 "supplemental complaint" the group noted that Kimmel's comments on the death of Charlie Kirk provided proof for their that he had violated FCC rules.
“Two weeks ago, the Center for American Rights complained to this Commission that Jimmy Kimmel was operating his Jimmy Kimmel Live! program in line with his personal leftist political agenda rather than the public interest as law requires,” the Sept. 17 letter noted. “Unfortunately, we now have all the proof this Commission should need of his failure to meet his public interest responsibilities, as he misused the airwaves to act in callous disregard of the facts and the obligations he owes viewers and the truth.”
“ABC’s affiliates need to step up and hold ABC accountable as a network for passing through material that fails to respect the public-interest standard to which they are held,” the letter concluded. “Disney as ABC’s corporate owner needs to act directly to correct this problem. And if ABC won’t take Kimmel off the air for this, then this Commission should tell KABC-7 it will come off the air if that’s necessary to put an end to this outrage.”
Those views dovetail with those of FCC Chair Brendan Carr who had repeatedly argued the agency has the power to remove broadcast station licenses if they fail to provide “balanced coverage.”
Carr has also repeatedly signaled that the agency would like to weaken the power of broadcast networks, which he regularly attacks bias, and at the same time strengthen local broadcast affiliates.
In the wake of ABC's decision to suspend Kimmel's show indefinitely, Carr's views were widely criticized by free speech advocates, including the ACLU, the Writers Guild of America and the lone Democrat Commissioner on the FCC, Gomez.
In a statement, the Writers Guild of America West (WGAW) and Writers Guild of America East (WGAE) said "the right to speak our minds and to disagree with each other – to disturb, even – is at the very heart of what it means to be a free people. It is not to be denied. Not by violence, not by the abuse of governmental power, nor by acts of corporate cowardice. As a Guild, we stand united in opposition to anyone who uses their power and influence to silence the voices of writers, or anyone who speaks in dissent. If free speech applied only to ideas we like, we needn't have bothered to write it into the Constitution. What we have signed on to – painful as it may be at times – is the freeing agreement to disagree. Shame on those in government who forget this founding truth. As for our employers, our words have made you rich. Silencing us impoverishes the whole world. The WGA stands with Jimmy Kimmel and his writers."
Christopher Anders, director of the Democracy and Technology Division at the American Civil Liberties Union, also attacked the suspension and the FCC chair.
“Jimmy Kimmel is the latest target of the Trump administration’s unconstitutional plan to silence its critics and control what the American people watch and read," he said. "Cowering to threats, ABC and the biggest owner of its affiliate stations gave the Trump FCC chairman exactly what he wanted by suspending Kimmel indefinitely and dropping the show."
“This is beyond McCarthyism. Trump officials are repeatedly abusing their power to stop ideas they don’t like, deciding who can speak, write, and even joke.," he concluded. "The Trump administration's actions, paired with ABC's capitulation, represent a grave threat to our First Amendment freedoms.”
In response to the suspension, Gomez repeated her arguments that the FCC lacks the authority to remove broadcast licenses over news coverage and aired some of her strongest criticisms to date of the agency.
“We cannot allow an inexcusable act of political violence to be twisted into a justification for government censorship and control," she said. "First, an ABC reporter was told that his coverage amounted to hate speech and that he should be prosecuted simply for doing his job. Then, the FCC threatened to go after this same network, seizing on a late-night comedian’s inopportune joke as a pretext to punish speech it disliked. That led to a shameful show of cowardly corporate capitulation by ABC that has put the foundation of the First Amendment in danger."
“This FCC does not have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to police content or punish broadcasters for speech the government dislikes," she stressed. "If it were to take the unprecedented step of trying to revoke broadcast licenses, which are held by local stations rather than national networks, it would run headlong into the First Amendment and fail in court on both the facts and the law. But even the threat to revoke a license is no small matter. It poses an existential risk to a broadcaster, which by definition cannot exist without its license. That makes billion-dollar companies with pending business before the agency all the more vulnerable to pressure to bend to the government’s ideological demands."
"When corporations surrender in the face of that pressure, they endanger not just themselves, but the right to free expression for everyone in this country," she concluded. "The duty to defend the First Amendment does not rest with government, but with all of us. Free speech is the foundation of our democracy, and we must push back against any attempt to erode it.”
