\n<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the immediate wake of the Jimmy Kimmel Live!<\/em> controversy, President Donald Trump has now suggested that broadcast networks should have their FCC licenses revoked if they air overwhelmingly negative coverage of \u2014 or commentary about \u2014 him.<\/p>\n \n\tTrump told reporters aboard Air Force One, \u201cI have read someplace that the networks were 97 percent against me, I get 97 percent negative, and yet I won and easily,\u201d according to The New York Times<\/em>. <\/p>\n \n\tHe added on the return flight from his U.K. visit: \u201cI would think maybe their license should be taken away.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tTrump also called networks \u201can arm of the Democrat party\u201d that are out to get him.<\/p>\n \n\tThe president\u2019s latest remarks are an escalation of what many are calling an attack on free speech. While Trump has consistently berated his opponents and members of the Democratic Party, it appears he doesn\u2019t want the same done to him \u2014 at least not on TV.<\/p>\n \n\tThis all stemmed from remarks comedian Jimmy Kimmel made on his show Monday night about the alleged shooter who killed right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. Kimmel mocked MAGA Republicans over what he saw as scrambling attempts to distance their own political affiliations from alleged Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe 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,\u201d Kimmel said at the time.<\/p>\n \n\tThe comments quickly caught Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr\u2019s attention. Carr condemned the monologue material and proceeded to threaten ABC affiliate licenses if they continued to carry the show. \u201c[This] appears to be an action by Jimmy Kimmel to play into the narrative that this was somehow a MAGA or Republican-motivated person,\u201d Carr said on a podcast. \u201cWhat people don\u2019t understand is that the broadcasters \u2026 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\u2019s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tABC ended up \u201cindefinitely\u201d suspending Jimmy Kimmel Live!<\/em> The swift and stern response by Disney has drawn a wave of its own criticism. As The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>\u00a0previously reported, the decision to pull Kimmel\u2019s late night show was made by CEO Bob Iger and co-chairman of Disney Entertainment Dana Walden.<\/p>\n \n\tThe FCC regulates the public airwaves in the U.S., giving out licenses to TV stations to broadcast over radio frequencies. While Carr has suggested that the agency should investigate other shows, like The View<\/em> (also on ABC), the lone Democratic commissioner on the FCC, Anna Gomez, said the agency doesn\u2019t \u201chave the ability to actually take these actions\u201d based on content.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI see this as a part of this administration\u2019s campaign of censorship and control, and what it\u2019s doing is it\u2019s weaponizing its licensing authority in order to bring broadcasters to heel and to really think twice about what they say about this administration,\u201d she added at Axios<\/em>\u2018 Media Trends summit on Thursday. \u201cIt\u2019s not because of the content of these broadcasts, whether it\u2019s the Jimmy Kimmel show or CBS, is actually inciting violence or breaking the law. All it\u2019s doing is speaking about this administration in a way that it does not like that is contrary to the First Amendment. It\u2019s contrary to the Communications Act.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the immediate wake of the Jimmy Kimmel Live! controversy, President Donald Trump has now suggested that broadcast networks should have their FCC licenses revoked if they air overwhelmingly negative coverage of \u2014 or commentary about \u2014 him. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, \u201cI have read someplace that the networks were 97 percent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22343,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[4698,7356,1235,278,10484,13711],"class_list":{"0":"post-22342","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-fcc","9":"tag-licenses","10":"tag-lose","11":"tag-networks","12":"tag-treating","13":"tag-unfairly"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}