The following is a lightly edited transcript of the September 18 episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch this interview here.
Perry Bacon: I’m Perry Bacon and this is the Right Now Show, which is a twice weekly show about politics and government here sponsored by the New Republic. I’m honored to be joined by Kathy Roberts Ford, professor of journalism at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. And what we’re talking about today is the Jimmy Kimmel suspension that happened last night. And also there was a lawsuit Trump filed against the New York Times and we’re gonna generally focus on like what I’m describing as kind of Trump’s war on the media, because I think that’s what’s happening. So professor, thanks for joining me.
Kathy Roberts Ford: Oh, it’s great to see you again, Perry.
Bacon: So Jimmy Kimmel is a comedian and he’s not even as focused on the news as John Stewart was, you know, back in the Daily Show era. So, I’m really concerned about this and I think I’m right to be. So explain to people why it’s concerning the series of events that resulted in Jimmy Kimbel and that it’s so concerning.
Ford: So what appears to have happened is Jimmy Kimmel has been suspended, his show has been suspended by ABC, and definitely were said. So, you know, it’s a little unclear, the degree of this suspension. And it, this happened after his monologue in which he mentioned the murder of Charlie Kirk. And in talking about that murder, my understanding is that he said something to the effect of he was opining or talking about the political ideology of the killer and suggesting that maybe the killer’s political ideology was more MAGA oriented than it was anything else. And, you know, we know that the facts on the ground are still very much at play regarding the political ideology of the killer but both Trump and FCC Chairman put pressure on ABC to get rid of the Jimmy Kimmel Show. And you know, the FCC Chairman has this incredible power to yank a network’s license. And so this is a real chilling [situation for] free expression. By the way. The first amendment for forbids the use of regulatory threats and pressure to silence critics and to silence political discussion. And so this is very, very concerning.
Bacon: We should mention the role of like, Nexstar here. Do you understand that pretty well?
Ford: Why don’t you talk about Nexstar?
Bacon: So I guess, uh, part of what’s going on is like, it appears that there was an affiliate, there was a group of affiliates who said, first we are going to take off Jimmy Kimmel’s show inspired by the FCC Chairman sort of hinting you should do this. The affiliate said, we’re gonna move and this and Nexstar owns lots of affiliate stations, ABC affiliates. But Nexstar is trying to get a merger done, which requires the FCC’s approval. ‘Cause I think part of the, what’s happened throughout the year is like these regulatory approvals seem to be a great way to sort of force media compliance. We will not approve your merger unless you do what we want. Seems to be a little bit of the story at CBS too.
Ford: That that’s exactly right and that’s what happened. As we understand it with the Stephen Colbert show, I mean the Stephen Colbert criticized CBS’s settlement with, if I’m remembering correctly, CBS settled over the 60 minutes interview for 16 million. I think Trump was suing for something like 10 billion. So, this was also a moment when Paramount, which owns CBS was seeking a merger with Skydance. It’s at that very moment. And so it seems as though these mergers by the parent companies of news media institutions are being politicized in order to pressure the parent companies into doing the bidding of government officials.
Bacon: You said the First Amendment is violated by X and I think, I mean the literal words of the First Amendment are we have a freedom of press and religion and so on. So when you said that what you meant is the precedent has been that the FCC... or what do you mean when you said the First Amendment bars?
Ford: Alright, so you know that the Hi Anna Wex has joined us as well and we’ll, uh, we’re talking about, uh, Jimmy Kimmel. So go ahead, expressor. So, you know, the plain text of the First Amendment, Congress shall make new law, abridging freedom of speech or the press the part that we’re concerned about here. It seems straightforward, but it’s really, it’s been elaborated on over the centuries by court precedent. And so it’s not so plain what it means but one thing that it’s been interpreted to mean over time by the Supreme Court and as recently as 2024 in a case called NRA v. Vullo is that the, is that the government cannot use government regulators cannot pressure cannot use cannot pressure like banks and insurers, like institutions like this, to get them to speak in a in a particular way or to punish certain kind of kinds of speech or to not, be committed to certain groups that have... they can’t compel speech. And so, you know, the First Amendment forbids that. The First Amendment, I shouldn’t say forbid, but when we think about the defamation cases, that are being used prolifically by President Trump the the First Amendment gives robust protection to errors it made by the press or any of us right in our public speech. That’s a famous New York Times case called New York Times v. Sullivan. And it’s called the Actual Malice Standard. We can talk more about that later, but I think that’s a kind of answer to your question.
Bacon: Okay, so Kimmel. So if the FCC chairman had called the head of ABC and said, Jimmy Kimmel’s show must end, that would be one thing. What what appears to be happen is a little bit more tricky, only because it appears What happened is the FCC Chairman hinted. Yes.
Bacon: And then he hinted that maybe the affiliates should maybe cancel the show.
Ford: That’s exactly right.
Bacon: And then they did. So it’s a little, so I assume this is not...
Ford: It’s pressure, it’s, you know, yeah. It’s pressure. It’s not perfect. It’s not, you know, this is not a case. Number one. Number two, these are pressure tactics that are being used. But, and they’re not, you know, they’re, they’re, I would not, I would not say that these were in the spirit of, uh, democracy.
Bacon: Ana, lemme start at the beginning here and just ask, okay, so Jimmy Kimmel is not a journalist. Jimmy Kimmel does not break news. Jimmy Kimmel’s show is not even as political as say, the Daily Show was in the, a couple decades ago. Right. I’m still really concerned about this and, and what happened. And talk about why you talk about your feelings about this, your general reaction to what happened. This feels really like a, a moment to me of sorts.
Ana Marie Cox: I think it is a moment. We have seen just how quickly the entertainment industry, the media industry more broadly is willing to, you know, obey in advance, surrender in advance. I think that the most concerning thing in some ways is this wasn’t an official political action. I think this has shown how fearful. These enormous industries that have tons of power or we think of them as having power, are willing to knuckle under, but they’re willing to knuckle under because they wanna grow their power. Right. And it’s an interesting tension to me that that, that they think that this is gonna satisfy. I think that what we learn in authorian institutions is that sometimes, like these places, these centers of apparent power mistake the knuckling under as a way to cooperate, or at least that’s been the historical pattern, right? I mean, in this era of global media networks and in how they really do rely on government to, they work in almost partnership, right? In a way that maybe we haven’t seen before or they’re, that’s what they’re aiming at.
Bacon: Lemme probably add little bit to ask the question. That’s just like, so you said it’s not government action. This is a little bit different. Jeff Bezos is voluntarily, in some ways, got rid his opinion section. This is a little bit different in that there was, the FCC chairman was a little bit more actively engaged.
Cox: Right? But they could have fought it. Like, that’s the thing what I mean about surrender in advance. Obey in advance, I see that there’s not even like a tension there. Right?
Bacon: Right.
Cox: There wasn’t even like a sense of like screw off, right? Right. Like we are gonna do this, which is something that in the past, like some like media entities or at least individual folks have maybe kind like made noise about, to me this was just the threat of kind of government intervention and wasn’t even sort of like, we’re doing this, but I don’t know, like even some kind of admission that this is restrictive and I think that’s because, and this is the scary thing, it’s because they don’t care. They are willing to sacrifice all of this in order to gain whatever little bit more power or a lot more power. I mean, I worry about the working in concert. Between these things, I worry that this is a sign that we’re gonna see cooperation. Right.
And I think that the Bezos moves, it shows that, and I worry so much like I could actually get emotional about this, which is the future of, of Perry’s in our industry, right? Like I was actually like, I have a, it funny because I’ve been planning on this conversation, I’m gonna see my dad for the first time in a long. I’ll be honest, he’s a regular MSNBC viewer. He loves MSNBC. He’s always like, you should have a show in MSNBC. Yeah, and I should but I kind of wanna point out to him in a way like, dad, you’re missing the crumbling here. Okay. Like, you’re missing that all these other, like, I love him so much, but like the ways that like the centers of like what we think of as liberal discourse, like we, I don’t know how we alert people anymore. Right? That we are under threat. The New Republic is under threat. These places where you get a little dissent [are under threat]. We are being, I don’t dunno how else to put it.
Bacon: Lemme come back to that in a second. I wanna, I do wanna come back to that. Lemme ask. Did you, I can’t, and ABC’s not quite and neither, nobody’s quite saying what Jimmy Kimmel said. That is actually the, I went through and looked at the comments and I’m a little bit confused by which one... he speculates about the killer in a way that is probably not, we should not. Doing that in a certain way. But I don’t know that, I mean, it’s not, it was not a firing offense. But do we think that’s the issue is like he suggested the killer was conservative and the killer? Is that the, that we think the crux of this is?
Cox: That’s what I’ve, I guess what I’ve seen. I mean, I think also, didn’t he mock Trump for like, switching this subject when he was asked about Charlie Kirk and he went to like, look at the trucks, which he definitely did that.
Bacon: I’m not sure what the, what the, I think the offense taken is probably Kim. I wonder if, I don’t know what the offense taken is so let me, I, the thing I wanted to come back to. Anna mentioned smaller outlets. Let’s talk about the big outlets first, though. Trump forced or coerced or weakened debate. As you said, Disney and CBS already reached, you know, agreements in these defamation suits with him. The Wall Street Journal and the Times are now facing these defamation suits. These are very big institutions that sort of define the American medium a certain way. So professor to start with you like, how worried should we be that like he’s suing sort of the biggest news auditions in the country, the ones that still at this point deliver a lot of the breaking news and investigations in the country.
Ford: I think it’s worrisome. I think it’s a, a tactic to, meant to silence the press and to, and intimidate the press into some type of pulling back on a kind of robust uninhibited, uh, debate, public debate that and in their coverage of the administration, uh, that’s the goal. The truth of the matter is is that in all these defamation lawsuits that we’ve seen experts say time and time again that, uh, these, these suits, uh, that he’s unlikely to win, right? Very, very unlikely to win. And the reason is because the First Amendment provides robust protection for the press, for all of us to make errors like when we are speaking about matters that involve public officials and public figures. It’s just a very, it’s, this was set in the New York Times v. Sullivan case in 1964.
It came out of interestingly, a civil rights era case in which white elites in the South, uh, sued the New York Times for errors in a in a civil rights ad, uh, saying we’ve been defamed, we’ve been defamed. It was hard to defame them, of course, um, for what they were doing as white supremacists. And yet this, they were trying to use libel law as a tool to silence the press. And the Supreme Court at that time said, no, you know, the First Amendment, if the First Amendment means anything, it means that we have to allow some degree of error in public speech, particularly about people who are public officials. And that went on then to be, to include public figures down the road in further cases. But, you know, it’s just such an important principle. So the actual malice standard says, you know, you are protected. These institutions are protected for errors even if they’re defamatory, if these errors are made without knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth. And most professional journalists, journalists and news institutions don’t go recklessly around making errors. Right. And they don’t have reckless disregard for the truth. That’s not true of all news institutions or of all people. But it is does tend to be true. And so these. What we know is that the Supreme Court very recently has turned down an opportunity to revisit the actual malice standard in a case. We think it’s very, very robust protection still. And, so, my expectation is that, and hope, profound hope is that the New York Times is gonna see this through. And I hope Murdoch for the Wall Street Journal sees it through.
Ownership matters here. Ownership matters, right? When you’ve got a Paramount that has all these other business interests owning a news institutions, they’re gonna make deals [and] they, they have made deals in order to protect their other interests. Same thing with Bezos. Same thing with the Walt Disney Company, right? I’m hoping the New York Times is, is going to hold the line for us all.
Bacon: And, somebody like me who’s somewhat critical of some of the mainstream legacy media at times, we, you agree that it’s bad to see them facing these kind of lawsuits still, obviously.
Ford: Yes. Yeah. I mean, I can be critical too. I want the New York Times to create a democracy desk. I want them to have a vertical where they begin covering in this really. You know, highly framed way democratic erosion in the United States and the TikTok rising of authoritarianism. I want them to do that. I think other institutions are doing it, but news institutions are doing it better, but we need the agenda setting institution to do it. That said, it is at a very important institution. They do a lot of really important kinds of investigative reporting with their incredible resources that other institutions just don’t have the, the, the resources to do. I’m sorry, I wanna pitch over to my colleague here.
Cox: I worry in some ways, I worry that the pursuit of profit leads to the smoothing out of news coverage, but not in a, you know, not in an overt way. Right? Because like, I don’t think anyone at the Times is like, we have to, or the Washington Post. Like what, what actually, what happened in the Washington Post is the scary thing, right? Is because there was a decision to go from bipartisan coverage, like, I mean, at least like an acknowledgement that there are critical frames for what’s happening in government and to just outright be like, Nope, that is not what we’re gonna do. We are just going to, you know, outward like forthrightly stop criticism of this administration. And I agree that it’s these, these huge organizations that own newspapers that feel like the real threat. But part of me is like that just happens more and more these days.
It’s very hard for independent institutions and I don’t know if we’re gonna call the Times. Like you’re right. Like it’s not part of like a global conglomerate at this point with lots of different like fingers in every pie, but they still need to function in this regulatory environment. And to me it’s the culture of lack of dissent, and also the move towards the view, what has become the dominant way for large institutions to cover politics, which is the view from nowhere, right? The classic James follows like conception of the, the myth of objectivity, which the Times is probably tied up in, in a way that is more frustrating to me personally than almost any other institution because I kind of love the Times, I really do. Like I grew up in Texas and Nebraska and getting the Sunday times like as special delivery was such a treat for me, like as a teenager, right? Like that and the New Yorker were the epitome of like real journalism and they taught me to care about politics in a big way, right? And so to see them do this like performance of concern about the agenda that’s actually being set by the right, like, and it filters in I think beyond the op-ed section, like their coverage of trans issues has just been terrible and it’s outside the op-ed section even, right? They still do all this great journalism. But they’ve adopted this view that they must take this authoritarianism seriously, right. They’re not gonna have a democracy desk. They’re just not, they’re not gonna do it. And I mean, we can hope that this suit radicalizes them. I feel like that might be the best outcome.
Bacon: Because Kimmel is suspended temporarily, maybe permanently. Colbert is off too. Talk about like, it’s not 1993 where Jay Leno and, you know, Letterman have these huge audiences, like is the silencing of the late night host important? And I’ll start with you about that.
Cox: Um, that’s a really good question because on the one hand, I feel like I’m not concerned about Jimmy.
Bacon: He’s gonna be fine economically. I agree.
Cox: He’s gonna be fine. Like Stephen Colbert is gonna be fine. And those of us that enjoy them are also gonna be able to continue to join them. In some ways, I worry about as a trickle down effect, like Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel both created spaces with their shows that fed were feeders. Like the writers that that worked on those shows, the guests that they had on those shows, they created a space where you can see like good natured criticism, right? Like not just good natured, hilarious criticism, right? Like satire is really important and it sets a model for like, this is also a way we can, criticize power.
And if we look at Colbert and Kimmel, they also did a lot of action. Like one of the things that really moved me about Jimmy Kimmel, not my favorite late night show to be honest, was how he did the casting call for actors that needed just like one or two parts to get their Screen and Actors Guild health insurance, right? Like, what a wonderful, like mechanic of solidarity... We could talk more about like Disney’s cultural output. ‘Cause it’s a little like, I know you can’t. You can’t say that just ‘cause they put on Andor they are anti-fascist. But like Jimmy Kimmel had Diego Luna as a guest host and Diego Luna’s like monologue every night with like ‘screw ICE.’ Like, and he like talked very passionately about it. And to see that on television from an actor, you know, having that platform seems, I’m not gonna say it’s important, but it normalizes criticism.
Bacon: Okay. Right.
Cox: It makes it seem like that’s an accepted part of the conversation, that we can do that. And I think in some ways just to say like, that’s not normal. Like that, that’s not an accepted way to even have a casual conversation is really chilling. Yeah.
Ford: I would agree. I just wanna say one quick thing. The silencing of anyone, anyone especially, is a terrible thing in a democracy, period. Full stop. And yet, and the silencing of our comedians who are often some of our greatest truth tellers, it’s especially, uh, since a very. Strong signal across the body, politic, uh, and it’s, it’s very dangerous.
Bacon: So let ask a final question. I want two questions. I’ll start with Kathy on this one is talk about the historic analogies. ‘Cause you wrote this book, you co-authored a book about journalism in the Jim Crow era. How about the historical analogies and also the sort of comparative ones between how do these tactics that Trump is doing, are they similar to what other authoritarians do? So talk about the sort of historical and then the comparative analogies here.
Ford: Yeah. So, I write a book, journalism and Jim Crow, in which we co-edited and contributed significantly to this book. And what we documented is the role of white newspaper editors and journalists in actively building white supremacists political economies. I mean, it wasn’t just through storytelling, although that was really important, but they were active. They collaborated with political and business elites to do this. And so what we found is, what I would say is that in the Jim Crow South, these, you know, in building the Jim Crow South, these newspapers helped entrench one party rule. They used these kinds of selective punishment of critics and they used, uh, they used silencing of critics often. I mean all kinds of means. And that’s a real, that was a very powerful tool. Not only that there leaders were involved in this work, but that their newspapers then normalized all of it, or whitewashed all of it and covered up all kinds of things along the way. And, and we didn’t have a lot of, pushback except for the, for the black press.
Now, what I would say is, you know, this kind of the way in which those papers normalized and used falsehoods to entrench one party rule and these kind of subnational authoritarian regimes. We don’t wanna follow that path today. We don’t wanna have any kind of news media ecosystem that is participating in any kind of thing like that. But what’s happening now as we’ve seen in our country is that what happens has happened in Hungary and Turkey, which is using regulatory threats and is using lawsuits as a way to capture the media, the news media, and to capture some, you know, space and information ecosystem. And, you know, we, we should be all very, very concerned.
Bacon: Anna, you mentioned at the beginning, or you mentioned a few minutes ago about smaller outlets and I, and I’m thinking about that myself. It’s like if the New York Times has a big legal team or has a lot of money, has a lot of issue of memory, I think they have a legal team. The Post in theory is backed by a ‘cause, you know, a billionaire. Uh, so how I am concerned, I mean, are you, I’ll ask you this personally. Are you, are you worried about the outlets you write for that they might, because Gawker they might, they might be sued out of existence. How, how real do you feel about that?
Cox: I think about it when I have to pay my mortgage every month. I mean, like, these are the institutions, like these are the places that I have worked at. I mean, I’ve also written for all the big places, but it’s been harder to find, you know, work from there. Like one of the things I’ve pointed out to my MSNBC dad is that, don’t you notice that there are fewer contributors that like, there are just like fewer voices on that network. And I think like that’s something you’re seeing everywhere. And I think unfortunately with the smaller and smaller outlets, one issue is we’re not just, just not prepared to be able to take on the work that a place like the Times can do, right? Like we can do really important stuff and we can help push the conversation, but like where do you go for the really important big investigations, right? Like I love ProPublica. I think that’s an interesting model, but it has public support, right? Like that is, I think. The future.
We need, like I just was just writing about this, in some ways we need anti-capitalist models of production. In order to continue to do the work that we have to do, we need cooperatives, we need like some kind of nonprofit funding. We need to have like the resources to continue be the voice for criticism and dissent and information, right? Like, I love 404 Media. I love Defector. Like those are the places that we have to, like, support. People are, you know, people are listening. Like, I can’t tell people to unsubscribe from the Times because I still think we really need it. But if you are interested in the future of journalism and sustaining the kind of like really powerful, you know, alternatives that can speak back to places like the Times and Critic. I think one of the roles that we can play, like you and I personally, like can play is to get, is to articulate the criticisms of these larger places, right? And if support can come from larger bases, from people who can like spare, like something I tell people all the time, like the New Republic subscription is not... it’s a bargain.
And I just go ahead and like say it like, if you are enjoying this conversation and you are thinking about unsubscribing from the times, maybe do that. Sure. But add eight bucks a month, you know, like, you know, we need this base to continue to push back. And get hold those institutions responsible. And indeed, in addition to holding the government, like holding larger power responsible because who is the times gonna hear from, like journalists read other journalists. I think that we are a really important voice. And again, I think that to articulate the problems, just to go back to the conversation that we had last week. A voice that gets people to think about, oh yeah, you know what? Like that view from nowhere issue at the times like that is kind of weird. Like that is something that I wish that they would do differently, you know? So I, I don’t know if that’s a coherent answer, but for some reason, you always ask me on like before I’ve had my first cup of coffee. So,
Bacon: And with that, this is a great conversation. Any final thoughts? I’ll let you, any final thoughts you have? I wanna conclude any final thoughts by Jennifer’s like, uh, sorry.
Cox: Buy her book I’m pointing. That sounds like a really good, way of thinking about what’s happening now, like that’s such a wonderful historical example. Uh, her book about Jim Crow, like I forgot the name. Kathy’s book about Jim Crow, journalism. Jim Crow, what?
Ford: Journalism and Jim Crow Journalism.
Cox: I’m sorry, I forgot, I forgot that we’re, we’re moving fast. Yeah. But that, I’m gonna get it. And it sounds like a really, really good model for what, unfortunately, is happening now and subscribe to the New Republic.
Bacon: Alright. On that note, thank you all for joining me. Great conversation. Good to see you.
Cox: Bye-bye.
Ford: Great to see you.