ABC rescinded its stupid temporary suspension of Jimmy Kimmel over his comments in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death. He’ll be back in prime time on Tuesday night. But we should still be deeply concerned that the combination of authoritarian government and weak-kneed, overly compliant news organizations are a huge threat to free speech and expression.
For several reasons, Kimmel was well-positioned to fight the suspension from ABC, which stemmed from Federal Communications Chair Brendan Carr’s threats to punish the network directly and Nexstar and other companies that own lots of local ABC affiliates stating that they would not air his show. Kimmel’s actual words, suggesting that Kirk’s killer was not a traditional liberal and that the right was using Kirk’s death for political gain, were not that controversial or even remarkable. Also, Kimmel is a white male TV host who clearly leans towards the Democrats over the Republicans but isn’t particularly well-known for taking bold political stances. Finally, Kimmel has been on TV for more than two decades, meaning he has a huge following and lots of celebrity friends.
So the coalition of people who defended Kimmel and objected to ABC’s decision was unusually large, powerful, and politically diverse. Even conservatives such as Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul said bluntly that Carr had overreached. Famous actors and actresses rallied behind him, with some threatening not to work with ABC in the future. Democratic politicians, usually wary of taking any kind of strong stand, almost universally embraced him. Perhaps most importantly, it appeared that thousands of Americans had canceled their subscriptions to Disney-owned streaming services Hulu and Disney+, threatening the company’s bottom line.
Kimmel, with such a strong support base, got his job back within a week. But the fact that he was removed in the first place remains alarming. Carr was willing to directly inject himself in television programming to silence a critic of conservatives, directly contradicting the First Amendment. And companies such as Disney, Nexstar, and Sinclair that control the lives of so many writers, actors, and other creative types showed they would distance themselves from one of the most famous television personalities in the country at the drop of a hat. Kimmel can’t feel very comfortable about speaking his mind in the future, and I would say the same for even centrist white men at other major networks.
And the free speech climate is much worse for anyone who isn’t a centrist white man and friends with Jennifer Aniston. Rümeysa Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil were detained by ICE in part for writing op-eds critical of Israel. Over the last year, The Washington Post forced out its liberal opinion writers, CBS pushed out longtime news executives, and MSNBC fired longtime political analyst Matthew Dowd for comments about Kirk that were even more innocuous than what Kimmel said. Publicly criticizing the Trump administration and America’s conservative movement remains a risk to your career and potentially your safety because both the government and many media outlets won’t tolerate such speech.
What Carr did is most troubling because it was direct government action. But it’s still deeply worrisome that companies are muzzling critical voices on their own to either get favorable treatment from the government or simply because they largely agree with what Trump is doing.
So the protests to defend Kimmel worked. ABC and Disney received criticism from all corners, and it’s likely that the Trump administration realized it could not win this round. But the broader fight to defend free speech and expression from an authoritarian regime often aligned with the owners of major media outlets is still ongoing. Getting Jimmy Kimmel back on the air was the easy part. Making sure the whole canopy of loud, sharp critics of this administration continue to platforms will be much harder, and that’s the more important task.
