FCC orders review of ABC licenses after Jimmy Kimmel’s Melania Trump joke | Trump administration
The leading US media watchdog announced on Tuesday that it was stepping up its review of eight local broadcast licenses used by ABC; It’s a move that critics see as a clear example of political and regulatory punishment against a disliked broadcaster.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announcement comes after the White House launched a full-blown attack on ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel for a joke he made about Melania Trump last week.
On Monday, Donald Trump called for Kimmel to be fired over the episode in which Kimmel said the first lady “had a glow like a widow in waiting.” The joke was made two days before an alleged attempted shooting targeting the Trump administration disrupted the annual White House correspondents’ dinner.
The FCC, led by Trump appointee Brendan Carr, does not license national television networks; instead, it licenses each station that broadcasts using public airwaves.
ABC owns and operates eight stations, but has content deals with many more. These eight stations (WABC-TV New York, KABC-TV Los Angeles, WLS-TV Chicago, WPVI-TV Philadelphia, KTRK-TV Houston, KGO-TV San Francisco, WTVD-TV Raleigh-Durham and KFSN-TV Fresno) are the stations targeted by Carr’s FCC.
These stations now have to apply for renewal by May 28, years before they were originally required to do so. The FCC announcement appears to hinge on: investigation initiated by the agency At the beginning of last year, we transitioned to ABC parent company Disney’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices.
“Specifically, FCC rules provide that where the FCC deems an application to renew a license necessary for the proper conduct of an investigation, the FCC has the authority to call for early renewal of a broadcaster’s licenses. Doing so both allows the FCC to conduct the ongoing investigation and enables the FCC to ensure that the broadcaster is meeting its public interest obligations more broadly,” David J Brown, head of the video division at the FCC’s media bureau, wrote in a memo. “The FCC determines that it is essential within the meaning of the agency regulations to call for early renewal of Disney’s ABC licenses under the public interest standard of the Communications Act at this time.”
One Conservative podcast released on TuesdayCarr weighed in on the investigation into DEI, saying, “There’s evidence that Disney is pretty bad. There’s evidence that Disney is literally dividing and categorizing employees by race and gender, and potentially — we’ll see what the evidence reveals — offering people different opportunities based on their race, gender or other protected class. And we’ll get some more discovery from Disney on that. But it could raise character questions about the company in the long run.”
In the podcast, Carr said license renewals could be “expedited” if there were “significant concerns” about how a network operates and questions about whether it is doing so in the public interest. If the FCC finds that a broadcaster is in violation, the next step will be a hearing decision, which Carr said is “a multi-month process.”
Anna M Gomez, the sole Democrat on the FCC, condemned any attempt to speed up the license renewal process for ABC or any television network targeted by the Trump administration. “This is unprecedented, illegal and going nowhere.” Wrote a post on X on Tuesday. “This political stunt won’t last. Corporations must oppose it head on. The First Amendment is on their side.”
In an interview with the Guardian last month, Gomez said the license renewal mechanism was deliberately burdensome and time-consuming to avoid the appearance of partisan decision-making.
“If they are trying to take adverse action through the license renewal process, it is a difficult, lengthy process with multiple layers of decisions that need to be made by different parties in order to protect broadcasters from the capricious and arbitrary actions of the commission,” Gomez said.
Tom Wheeler, who served as chairman of the FCC during Barack Obama’s presidency, told the Guardian on Tuesday that Carr had “transformed”. [the FCC] evolving into a political organization that uses politics to achieve political goals, rather than “a policy institution operating in a political environment”.
Although Carr said ABC had the ability to schedule license renewals, Wheeler noted that any adverse decision could be appealed and license denials were extremely rare.
Wheeler said denying ABC’s licenses would “create a difficult time in the courts” but he did not see that as a goal. “There are two messages: There is a message to the Maga base: ‘Son, I’m going to them.’ There’s a message going to the president: ‘Son, I’m doing what you want me to do.’ “And the FCC has a message for every licensee to say: ‘I can do this to you, too.’”
In February, Carr confirmed: FCC also investigating ABC daytime talk show The View for potential violations of rules regarding equal time for opposing political candidates.
Despite calls from Trump and his wife for ABC to take action against Kimmel, his show aired as planned on Monday night. “It was a very light joke about the fact that she’s almost 80 and he’s younger than me,” Kimmel told the audience. “This was not a call for assassination by any definition. And they know that. I’ve been speaking out for many years, particularly speaking out against gun violence.”
In September, Carr pressured network television groups to pre-cancel Kimmel’s show as punishment for a comment he made following the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. Two right-leaning broadcast groups, Sinclair and Nexstar, did so, and ABC chose to pull Kimmel’s show “indefinitely.” Kimmel ultimately returned to the air a week later. Carr later claimed that Kimmel’s comments on his show were not meant as a threat.
Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, issued a statement Tuesday calling out Carr’s FCC. “The FCC is neither the journalism police nor the humor police,” he said. “This is nothing more than illegal pranks aimed at getting ABC to kiss the ring.”
“The FCC does not have the authority to revoke broadcasters’ licenses because of their perceived political views. But this is not just about Disney and ABC’s rights. President Trump is trying to solidify control over what Americans see and hear on radio, television and social media,” Jameel Jaffer, executive director of Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, said in a statement.
“If he gets his way, we will have government-only media outlets that publish only government-approved news and commentary. It would be hard to imagine an outcome more corrosive to democracy or more offensive to the first amendment.”
