A leader of the Federal Communications Commission is blasting Disney’s decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show in the face of “government pressure” that she says violates the First Amendment and endangers free speech.
Anna Gomez is one of two FCC commissioners serving under chairman Brendan Carr, who was appointed by President Donald Trump. Carr has been unabashed in using the powers of his office to MAGA-fy the media landscape. Gomez, a Joe Biden nominee, has likewise been open in calling out Carr — including on X — for “using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression.”
On Wednesday, Carr helped spark a revolt by broadcasters that carry ABC programming by threatening their FCC licenses. Large broadcast conglomerates announced they would preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live!, prompting the network’s corporate parent Disney to indefinitely suspend Kimmel’s show.
The late-night host’s supposed offense? He made jokes in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination, claiming that the “MAGA gang” was eager to distance themselves from any political affiliation with Kirk’s accused killer, while also seeking to “score political points” from the assassination. In the same segment, Kimmel roasted Trump for a seeming lack of emotion in the wake of Kirk’s death, playing a clip of the president answering a question about his dead friend by pivoting almost immediately to touting construction of the White House’s new grand ballroom.
Gomez issued a statement on Thursday hitting the Trump administration for “seizing on a late-night comedian’s inopportune joke as a pretext to punish speech it disliked.” But Gomez had even harsher words for ABC and Disney, calling the decision to pull Kimmel’s show “a shameful show of cowardly capitulation” that has “put the foundation of the First Amendment in danger.”
“When corporations surrender” in the face of government pressure, she wrote, “they endanger not just themselves, but the right to free expression for everyone in this country. The duty to defend the First Amendment does not rest with government,” she added, “but with all of us,” insisting: “We must push back against any attempt to erode it.”
As a legal matter, Gomez clarified that Carr’s extreme threats are toothless. “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 wrote, adding that any attempts to revoke broadcast licenses “would run headlong into the First Amendment and fail in court.” But she also recognized that the threat is nuclear — that broadcasters can’t exist without a license — and that such saber rattling by Carr makes “billion-dollar companies with pending business before the agency… vulnerable to pressure to bend to the government’s ideological demands.”
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Trump has long railed against his treatment by late-night comedians. He previously celebrated CBS’s move to end Stephen Colbert’s late-night show, and said he thought Kimmel would be next to go. On Thursday, Trump suggested that Disney was justified in its decision, making remarks to reporters on Air Force One. He said of the late-night shows: “All they do is hit Trump.” He also made clear that he has Carr’s back. Trump claimed, without evidence, that TV networks are “97 percent against me” and should be punished for that. “I would think maybe their license should be taken away,” he said. “It will be up to Brendan Carr.”
In posts on X, Gomez rounded out her view that the violence against Kirk is being “exploited as justification for broader censorship and control.” Kimmel’s jokes, in particular, she insisted, were “neither illegal nor grounds for companies to capitulate to this administration.”
The FCC commissioner added: “We must stand firm against every attempt to silence dissent, punish satirists and government critics,” adding: “To surrender our right to speak freely is to accept that those in power, not the people, will set the boundaries of debate that define a free society.”
From Rolling Stone US
