Tomorrow, September 23.

> Following a suspension of the show for host Jimmy Kimmel's comments about the death of Charlie Kirk, Disney says "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" will return to air on Tuesday, Sept 23.

Streisand effect in full force. I had never heard of Kimmel nor Kirk until psychopaths tried to silence them.

I'd be all for bringing back the Fairness Doctrine.

ETA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine

> The FCC is barred by law from trying to prevent the broadcast of any point of view. The Communications Act prohibits the FCC from censoring broadcast material, in most cases, and from making any regulation that would interfere with freedom of speech. Expressions of views that do not involve a “clear and present danger of serious, substantive evil” come under the protection of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press and prevents suppression of these expressions by the FCC. According to an FCC opinion on this subject, “the public interest is best served by permitting free expression of views.” This principle ensures that the most diverse and opposing opinions will be expressed, even though some may be highly offensive.

Source: https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/the_fcc_and_freedom_...

"Last Reviewed: 12/30/19" (Trump's first term)

Why does this need to be a federal concern? Other than the need to manage spectrum assignments at state borders, why can’t the states do all of this?

Why do California and Mississippi have to follow the same standards?

And the Food and Drug Administration exists in part to supervise food safety but it can't use its power to shut down Olive Garden over a culture war. What are we doing here?

Yes, but the FCC has existing procedures for communicating concerns and warnings to broadcasters about possible regulatory enforcement and an entire rule-making framework beyond that. The new FCC chair so directly addressing a specific incident off-the-cuff on a podcast and making threatening statements about FCC action against a specific broadcaster over a specific incident was extremely unusual and a troubling precedent. And, to be clear, I'd say the same thing if it were the Biden admin's FCC chair issuing semi-veiled threats against Fox News. We don't want federal agency chairs from either party using podcasts to conduct official business or as a conduit for plausibly deniable (but nonetheless real) specific threats.

As a separate matter, it's long been clear the FCC was created to serve a very time, context and needs - most of which either no longer exist or have changed substantially. Most media no longer travels through the limited shared resource of "airwaves". The agency's whole charter is in need of a major rethink.

How is Jimmy's speech immoral?

A list of words you can't say is about morality; it's a drag but at least it's objective. You either said the word or you didn't.

This is far more subjective.

Yes, sell the spectrum and get rid of the fairness doctrine. Few understand it.

The problem is that Trump made it clear the issue was criticism of him. For democracy to function, saying negative things about politicians has to be possible. If criticizing a sitting president isn't safe, you couldn't even safely air a presidential debate.

If that were true, then Trump would be banned from the airwaves, and Fox News and News Nation would have been shuttered years ago.

Tautology.

No, it wouldn't. The idea of spectrum allocation depends on government intervention. In a free market, transmitting radio waves would be a free for all.

It's his worst trait

The chair of the FCC said:

>What people don’t understand is that the broadcasters … have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest. When we see stuff like this, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.

Do you really want to pretend that he is no applying pressure by threatening businesses who broadcast speech he doesn't like?

Did you have a sibling growing up? Did you ever have that sibling beat the crap out of you and tell you it'd be worse if you told mom about it?

The chair of the FCC literally threatened them in public. It doesn't matter if "ABC admitted they didn't get pressure" in some attempt to appease Trump. We all got to watch and hear it for ourselves.

“He gave an answer” is comically dishonest framing, so it doesn’t matter what that answer is at all? Nice deflection at the end there, almost convinced me.

When you’re in a position of power, every word you utter has meaning and the weight of your authority behind it.

"Nice broadcast license you have there. Shame if anything happened to it"

[dead]

> Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) slammed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr for policing speech

I don't understand what you're taking from this, and I'm guessing you didn't read it.

If the FCC chair was the one engaged in wrong-doing (as Paul seems to believe), they would be the prime candidate for impeachment. In any case, it seems like Paul thinks that the previous administration was also engaging in censorship, and there were no impeachments in that case either, so perhaps he does not believe that censorship is a 'high crime or misdemeanor'.

The House has the sole power of bringing impeachment, Rand is in the Senate.

If he did the thing you ask, he would just be 'grandstanding' on something he has no vote to bring forward, which your statement would appear to damn him for.

On these reported facts, this looks like unconstitutional government-induced censorship. A court applying Vullo, Backpage, and Bantam Books would likely view the official’s statements as coercive retaliation for protected speech.

The Supreme Court decision in NRA v. Vullo (2024) states that a government actor can't threaten legal action unless content is removed by a social media platform (or a TV network in this case).

The problem isn't limited to the FCC in this case. The FCC doesn't actually have to act - it could be someone in the SEC, it could be the DOJ, or (as we have learned) it can literally be about bags of cash.

The FCC chair's statement was a bit of an indirect threat ("Pity if someone looked into your affiliates licenses"). But the timing makes it clear they were at least aware of and complicit in the backroom dealings that led to the show being taken off the air.

He didn't intervene in the say way that a mobster doesn't make threats when he states "nice place you got here, be a shame if something were to happen to it."

There's actually a word for it - jawboning

Did the FCC intervene in any sort of regulatory sense? No, that would be the "hard way", which didn't happen.

Did FCC chair Carr use the threat of regulatory power to intervene in internal business at ABC? Getting ABC to obey in advance sure seems like the implied "easy way."

Both fit the first definition of "intervene" at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/intervene - "To become involved in a situation, so as to alter or prevent an action"

Nice HN account. Be a shame if it were to be shadowbanned.