Since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, the nation has witnessed an escalating pattern of verbal attacks, lawsuits and threats to revoke broadcast licenses, targeting media outlets that carry commentary or other programming critical of the president. Companies and programs attacked include CBS, ABC, 60 Minutes, the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press. The regime’s policy of suppressing free speech came into sharp focus when Trump’s FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr threatened ABC/Disney corporation with retaliation if it didn’t suspend late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel for remarks he made on his show about the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. Within hours on Sept. 17, ABC complied by suspending Kimmel’s show indefinitely.
But the backlash to Trump’s heavy-handed government censorship, not seen in the U.S. since the McCarthy era, was fierce. A consumer boycott to cancel Disney’s streaming service was quickly launched and within five days, succeeded in pressuring ABC to reinstate Kimmel’s show, that was back on the air on Sept. 23. But 20 percent of local ABC-affiliate stations owned by Sinclair and Nexstar say they will continue to pre-empt Kimmel’s show.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Matt Wood, vice president of policy and general counsel with the media democracy group Free Press. Here, he examines Donald Trump’s attempt to control the nation’s media content, and the surrender of many media industry CEOs to authoritarianism, turning their backs on the nation’s First Amendment protections for free speech.
MATTHEW WOOD: One place to start here is to talk about the incredibly self-serving and hypocritical view that this president and a lot of his supporters seem to have about the First Amendment. They seem to think it means that powerful people — and typically white men, but all sorts of powerful people, especially these tech millionaires and others who helped him get into office this time — they can say whatever they want without consequence. And if anybody, including an individual or a company, even a large platform or — now we’re seeing news outlets as well — doesn’t agree with that point of view expressed by whether it’s a public or a private individual, well that’s a “free speech violation.”
So if I tune you out, I’m somehow violating your free speech in their worldview. And that’s of course completely wrong. The First Amendment is about Congress and by extension, the rest of our government not making any laws that abridge freedom of speech or freedom of the press. And so there’s just all sorts of grievances that people like Trump and Musk — and we can go on down the list — have and make about their supposed free expression. And of course, they’re free to say whatever they want. The First Amendment comes into play when government takes action, and that’s exactly what we’ve seen from Trump so many times.
SCOTT HARRIS: Matt, FCC Chair Brendan Carr, a co-author of Project 2025, has said his action to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air is just the beginning of cancellations and censorship. And then of course, just the other day, Trump explicitly said he wants to revoke FCC TV licenses from outlets that criticize him. How should our listeners and the public in general respond to this really dire threat to the First Amendment and free speech?
MATTHEW WOOD: Yeah, it’s a great question, and I think we’re still in the information gathering and organizing mode. There’s been an outcry from Congress and even from people on the other side of the aisle, from Brendan Carr. Even Sen. Ted Cruz, who chairs the powerful Senate Commerce Committee, expressed disapproval about Carr’s actions last week.
You mentioned Carr and Trump’s plans. I refer to this in another interview I did as “not very sophisticated gaslighting.” They really want to have it both ways. As I talked about the companies talking out of both sides of their mouths, I might as well mention Donald Trump and Brendan Carr’s version of that. After this happened, you saw Brendan Carr trying to backpedal and saying, “Oh, no, no, no. This was an ABC decision. It’s about rating. It’s a business decision. I had nothing to do with it.” Meanwhile, Trump is crowing about getting Kimmel off the air.
And what Brendan Carr said that precipitated a lot of this last week, it was only five days ago as the time you and I are talking here, Brendan Carr said, “Well, we don’t like what Jimmy Kimmel said. The president doesn’t like whoever he is pretending to speak for doesn’t like it. And so if these stations don’t take action and rein in his conduct, then we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he said, trying to sound tough. And he said, “If they don’t change their behavior, then there’ll be more work for the FCC to do.”
So there’s really no mistaking the threat there, even though in trying to cover their mistakes, cover their overreach, there was some backpedaling from at least Brendan Carr, not from Trump himself, who can’t help but crow about these things. And Carr said it. “I had nothing to do with it,” which is plainly the opposite of the intent he wanted and got in the middle of last week.
So you’re right. I mean, I don’t see this stopping anytime soon. At FreePress.net, that’s our website, we have different call tools, so you can call your local ABC station and express your disapproval of this kind of maneuvering and censorship. We’re talking about what Congress can do. As I said, there’s been a lot of great energy in Congress. I don’t think it’s really coalesced around any one action and I’ll finish here.
The reason this is sometimes hard to fight, even though it’s my job. That’s what we’ve been doing at Free Press for a long time, not just this administration but previous ones, too — is what we’re seeing is this corruption now is just out there in plain sight. There’s no hiding it. They’re actually quite proud of it. And so, I think a really important thing is just to stand up and say “no” and call it out.
And what we can do to change the law or prevent these kinds of things from happening in the future is sometimes tough to answer because this is already unlawful. There are already provisions in the Telecommunications Act that say the FCC can’t exercise the power of censorship or try to dictate content on television and radio stations just because it grants some licenses.
So this stuff is already outside of the norm. It’s already beyond the pale. And that’s why I think sometimes it’s hard to even know where it’s coming from or what we can do about it. First step is just calling it out and refusing to comply in advance or comply on the basis of threats coming from the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
I think the news of Jimmy Kimmel being reinstated is important, but we’re not done with this story because we have yet to see what he’s going to say when he comes back. We have yet to know whether the network affiliates, not ABC itself, but companies like Nexstar and Sinclair will even an air his show. And then even if everything falls into place and this corporate pressure and pressure on the government worked, there’s a lot more work for us to do because we simply can’t have a government trying to dictate what its opponents or even anybody can say. And that’s what we’re facing and that’s what we’re trying to fight back against at FreePress.net and with the other tools that we have.
For more information, visit Free Press at FreePress.net.
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