Don't Blame the FCC. It's Not Censorship.

Free speech advocates are mad at the Federal Communications Commission for pressuring ABC, Disney, and their affiliates for "canceling" Jimmy Kimmel's terrible show. A few facts are in order.

“The political cycle of using government to punish opponents is taking the country into dark corners that will result in less freedom, and less free speech, for all sides. The best immediate remedy is getting the FCC out of the business of regulating media.”

Editorial board, The Wall Street Journal (September 19, 2025)

The Wall Street Journal isn’t wrong, but its editorial fails to include a pertinent fact or two, at least on the topic of Disney-owned ABC’s suspension (not firing, not censorship, not “canceling”) of alleged “comedian” Jimmy Kimmel.

First, we need to revisit the massive and blatantly unconstitutional government censorship regime during the Biden Regency that ended less than 10 months ago. Social media companies, especially X (then called Twitter, before Elon Musk bought and transformed them), were pressured by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other White House officials to silence and marginalize health experts and communications from Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (now head of the National Institutes of Health) to author and former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson.

And don’t get me started on the aborted Department of Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Governance Board,” briefly led by this censorious clown.

And that was just on the government’s onerous and essentially malevolent pandemic scheme that put a generation of school kids behind schedule and fomented much of the mental health crisis we’re still dealing with, never mind the physical consequences (rMNA vaccine consequences, from myocarditis to microclotting) we’re now seeing reported and largely ignored by a legacy media that is increasingly depending on their advertising revenue. It was blatantly unconstitutional, and Biden “pardoned” vast swaths of officials behind the tragedy (but not everyone).

This was all dangerous, terrible, and blissfully defended and promoted by the former free-speech advocates in most of the legacy media. So perhaps we can forgive The Wall Street Journal’s editorial writers for their pearl-clutching over FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s thinly-veiled warning to ABC’s owners, following Kimmel’s callous, disrespectful, and blatantly false claim that Charlie Kirk’s assassin was “MAGA.”

“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.”

— Jimmy Kimmel

Side note: I am amazed at lefty partisans coming to Kimmel’s defense and spreading the lie that Kirk’s shooter is a “right-winger,” a Republican (his parents are), or “MAGA” (I refuse to publish his name - killers get too much notoriety as it is, and it inspires copycats). It’s the worst kind of propaganda. They’re even posting doctored photos on X and elsewhere. It’s a shameful and disturbing trend that fact-checkers and the so-called civility crowd ignore, and refuse to hold people on The Left™ accountable for such garbage. Every so-called “civility” blog but one site I follow has completely ignored the Kirk assassination. We should ask them why.

The worst of the “civility” crowd won’t say a word about the Kirk assassination, but join the pearl clutchers about “censoring” Kimmel. They don’t acknowledge that they’re defending his or anyone’s ability to lie with impunity. The same people never said a word about the Biden censorship regime. What a bunch of partisan, clueless, and useless hacks and fools. They really need to shed their partisanship and get out of their liberal bubbles, but they appear increasingly irredeemable and do more damage to the “cause” than they realize. I’ve given up on their ability to improve our disintegrating discourse. We need some serious people in this space, and they’re in short supply. I’m all for civility, but I have zero tolerance for frauds.

Even the New York Times, with what few, if any, journalistic standards they still hold to, finally acknowledges evidence from the assassin’s own mother, but is doing its best to obfuscate the issue.

Even my local Congressman is getting in on the propaganda campaign. I’m embarrassed that the disgraced ex-firefighter Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) allegedly represents me in Congress. He’s now trying to capitalize on an alleged claim that his Leesburg, Virginia, office received a “death threat.” Get in line, buddy. Members of Congress have sadly been getting violent threats for as long as I can remember (as a former congressional chief of staff and press secretary, I’ve seen them firsthand). Meanwhile, Suhas, as he’s called around here, is doing nothing to lower the cultural temperature. He’s no better than Jimmy Kimmel.

But enough of holding a few imbecilic partisans and media outlets accountable. Let’s revisit Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and his statement regarding the agency’s responsibilities under the Communications Act of 1934 (as amended). Carr has openly advocated for “reinvigorating” the Act’s “public interest” standard. You know, broadcasting over the public airwaves should be in the public interest. What Kimmel said - or what the Kirk’s assassin did last week - clearly were not.

The FCC was created by Congress in the Communications Act for the purpose of “regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication by wire and radio so as to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communications service . . . .” (In this context, the word "radio" covers both broadcast radio and television.) The Communications Act authorizes the Commission to "make such regulations not inconsistent with law as it may deem necessary to prevent interference between stations and to carry out the provisions of the Act." It directs us to base our broadcast licensing decisions on whether those actions will serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity.

“The Public and Broadcasting,” a manual of the FCC, updated in 2021

As the FCC will quickly tell you, “the First Amendment and the Communications Act bar the FCC from telling station licensees how to select material for news programs or prohibiting the broadcast of an opinion on any subject. We also do not review anyone’s qualifications to gather, edit, announce, or comment on the news. These decisions are the station licensee’s responsibility.”

However, this: “Nevertheless, there are two issues related to broadcast journalism that are subject to Commission regulation: hoaxes and news distortion.”

Let’s be clear, the FCC’s responsibilities do not extend to media entities or personalities who do not broadcast over the airwaves. That’s why YouTube (see: Megyn Kelley), Spotify (see: Joe Rogan and Shawn Ryan), and Sirius XM personalities like Howard Stern (may his now-canceled show rest in peace) can be as profane as they want. It gives Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, and the increasingly bizarre former Kirk associate Candace Owens “license” to spread whatever conspiracy theories they want, whether through discredited “historians” like Darryl Cooper and others.

But it doesn’t protect them from defamation and slander suits. Just ask Owens or Alex Jones.

The FCC regulates intentional hoaxes and “news distortion.” Here’s what they mean by that.

Note carefully that the language is not limited to “news programming,” nor does it exclude “comedians” such as Kimmel. There’s a robust case that, given the widespread availability of evidence from Utah prosecutors, Governor Spencer Cox (R-UT) and the mother of the assassin, Kimmel and his producers could not responsibly avoid being aware of the shooter’s shift to lefty politics over the past several months.

And that’s not all:

Note the term, “intentional falsification of the news,” again not restricted to news programming. The network and its affiliates, mostly owned by Nexstar and Sinclair, each of which owns and operates dozens of broadcasting stations across the United States, all have lawyers who know this law backwards and forwards. They, not the FCC, made the immediate decision to suspend the program. Sinclair is demanding an apology from Kimmel. Again, there’s a good case that Kimmel deliberately falsified the news for partisan intent.

So what is the truth? The accused killer seems to have been an internet-addled young man with newly left-wing politics, a love of furry porn video games, and a trans lover. It appears to be a political assassination by someone in the general zone of sanity (maybe an outskirt of the town of Sane, but certainly located somewhere in Cogent County). Investigators say he engraved “Hey fascist! Catch!” on one of the bullets and “Bella Ciao” on another, a reference to an Italian anti-fascist anthem. According to authorities, he wrote to his romantic partner: “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out. If I am able to grab my rifle unseen, I will have left no evidence.”

Nellie Bowles, The Free Press

You may not like these regulations. You may see them as an affront to the First Amendment. You might even want to abolish the Federal Communications Commission. You are welcome to hold those views and express them, and I understand the case; I might even agree with you, to a point. And given the growth and spread of alternative or “streaming” media, a case can be made that the FCC’s regulation of the airwaves is increasingly irrelevant. But until the law is changed or the agency is abolished or reformed, Nexstar and Sinclair, along with ABC’s owner Disney, were within their right to suspend Kimmel. It was a good call, undoubtedly driven by concerns over losing sponsorship and advertising dollars. It’s not remotely censorship, and suggestions to the contrary are, frankly, stupid.

To be sure, Chairman Carr’s mafia-like statement after Kimmel’s diatribe, “we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” was ill-advised. But the fact is, the FCC took no action other than to praise the actions of Nexstar and Sinclair. Those two entities, in reality, didn’t need any pressure from the FCC to act; it was the economics.

Don’t expect any action from the FCC. It’s not necessary.

There was a time when Jimmy Kimmel was funny. It was about 15 years ago. I even used to watch him, along with the other formerly funny late-night comedians, when I could stay up late enough to watch. This episode remains a personal favorite, despite its weird ending.

Somehow, like millions of others, they allowed themselves to be broken by Donald Trump or perhaps other insidious forces that turned them away from comedy gold to hate and, now, intentional disinformation.

I actually think the decline of comedy began with the presidential candidacy and election of Barack Obama, when comedians largely refused to parody or engage in any humor involving him that could have remotely been perceived as critical to the thin-skinned politician. Before Obama, roasting presidents was common on most comedy shows in the past; it was made famous by Chevy Chase’s characterizations of then-President Gerald Ford, along with Dana Carvey’s spot-on renditions of former President George H. W. Bush from decades past.

There’s no doubt that these same late-night shows are hemorrhaging money. Not all, it seems. NBC’s Jimmy Fallon, who famously hosted Donald Trump in a comedy skit and was probably eviscerated for it by the unfunny left, seems to be doing better than the others. But by most accounts, he’s nowhere near as outrageous as his colleagues.

It wasn’t the only time that Fallon featured President Trump on his show. And consistent with genuine comedy, he learned to imitate him well.

Those were the days. It makes me miss Johnny Carson and Jay Leno, who never let their politics - whatever they were - get in the way of their comedic routines.

ABC has a terrible track record of deliberate news distortion over the past few years. Just the other day, Matt Gutman, the chief national correspondent for the Disney-owned company's news arm, apologized for gushing over Robinson's texts to his transgender lover. Anchor David Muir and reporter Linsey Davis violated debate history and precedent over their dubious fact-checking and bias while “moderating” the Trump-Harris presidential debate in 2024. Trump successfully sued, winning a multi-million-dollar out-of-court settlement involving partisan former Clinton operative George Stephenopolous’s broadcast falsifications about Trump being “liable for rape.”

ABC may be the most egregious example of the legacy media’s descent into the abyss, but they’re hardly alone. The fact remains that it’s their affiliates, not the FCC, that’s holding them accountable, despite the evidence that the FCC has a responsibility here, too.

Hopefully, they’ll never have to exercise it. In the meantime, perhaps the legacy media outlets could rediscover their comedic mojo. They can start by learning from the legend, Johnny Carson.