Alienate half your audience? That doesn't compute. Kimmel was not watched by that half already.

> Firing someone for making a political statement is business.

Except that he was fired right after the FCC chair threatened ABC. That feels more like government censorship than business.

Unless now "business" encompasses "it's better for business to not criticize the government". Which I suppose it does, under Trump. But that's not something we should accept or allow in a free society, under the constitution we have.

> Kimmel was straight up spreading misinformation about the shooter.

There's been an absolute ton of that going around. Who else has been pulled from the air?

What Kimmel said was

> “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. “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”[1]

If that's "misinformation", and I'd love to hear how any part of that beside being "one of them" could even be considered so; regardless, it's pretty mild compared to some of the crazy shit we've been hearing lately.

[1] https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/article/abc-yanks-jimmy-kimmels...

> Kimmel was straight up spreading misinformation about the shooter.

... which is free speech, regardless of whether or not we agree with it.

But sure, I guess this sort of misinformation is fine when the president says it in support of his own ideology, but not ok when someone like Kimmel does it (and read a sibling poster's quote of what Kimmel said... that wasn't misinformation, or even false).

You're correct that defamatory speech isn't protected, but the remedy for that is a civil suit, not threats from a FCC commissioner.

This is absolutely government censorship.

And not to play the whataboutism card, but if Kimmel should be taken off the air for misinformation, then all of Fox "News" should have been taken off the air years ago.

'FOX NEWS' told the court they were innocent because they don't report news, they give opinion, and opinion doesn't have to be true.

It's fairly absolute. There are exceptions but they are usually narrower then most people think. Proving defamation especially against a public figure is difficult on purpose.

As for spreading misinformation if that was illegal the whole Trump administration and fox would be in deep trouble

It's a tough one, even without the Supreme Court issues, Kimmel alone is circumstantial at best; sure, the current POTUS is on record saying that Kimmel would be next to get the chop, but that proves nothing- any actual action taken would, I assume, be just pressure with no paper trail - classic intimidation leverage made famous by Scorsese.

>We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang 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

Mr. Kimmel does not assert Mr. Robinson was "MAGA". Simply that the, "MAGA gang" is trying to distance themselves from Mr. Robinson.

> it's nonsensical to believe that someone beloved by most people in the right wing would be targeted by a fellow right-winger

Look up groypers and Nick Fuentes - he's a right winger who was NOT a fan of Charlie Kirk and amassed a following about it. There is _some_ very mild evidence to believe that it's possible (I personally don't think that's the case FWIW)

> If someone like AOC or Bernie Sanders was viciously attacked at an event, you can't tell me that you would accept an unsourced assertion that "it was actually a marxist that harmed them."

So, first, both of those two (AOC in particular) have been the subject of extreme criticism from the tankie/accelerationist bits of the leftophere. It's 100% not out of the realm of possibility to imagine them being the target of an individual loon motivated by the right combinations of freakouts.

But also, it's not "unsourced" to say that Robinson comes from a conservative background, that he was a church-going-enough Mormon to be recognizable to his pastor, that he's informed by and involved in right-leaning edgelord/groyperist meme culture (that halloween costume was a pretty smoky gun), that he executed the murder with a family weapon to which he had easy access and apparently solid familiarity, etc...

I mean, his background looks extremely Trumpy. He's also apparently a closeted gay man with a hatred of Kirk in particular. And that doesn't make a lot of sense in total. But then that's the way it is with murderers. It's not a philosophy for the consistently rational.