\n<\/p>\n
Brendan Carr, the tough-talking, pro-Trump chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), claimed on Tuesday that Democrats and the media had \u201cmisrepresented\u201d critical comments he made about Jimmy Kimmel\u2019s late-night talkshow.<\/p>\n
Television conglomerates including Nexstar and Sinclair opted to pull the show for \u201cbusiness\u201d reasons, Carr argued, not because of anything he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no threat made or suggested that if Jimmy Kimmel didn\u2019t get fired, that someone was going to lose their license,\u201d Carr said during a press conference that followed the FCC\u2019s monthly meeting.<\/p>\n
On 17 September, ABC announced it would \u201cindefinitely\u201d pre-empt Jimmy Kimmel Live!, hours after Carr had appeared on a conservative podcast and appeared to pressure network affiliates to stop airing the show over comments by Kimmel on the death of the far-right pundit Charlie Kirk.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can do this the easy way or the hard way,\u201d Carr had said, explaining that he wanted broadcasters to \u201ctake action\u201d on Kimmel.<\/p>\n
Nexstar and Sinclair, two major carriers of ABC programming, quickly announced plans to pull Kimmel\u2019s show, seemingly forcing ABC\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, ABC decided to bring Kimmel back the following week, and both Nexstar and Sinclair followed suit. The network\u2019s decision reportedly followed a wave of cancellations of Disney\u2019s streaming service Disney+.<\/p>\n
Carr\u2019s comments drew criticism from across the aisle. Ted Cruz, the Republican Texas senator, said some of Carr\u2019s remarks were \u201cdangerous as hell\u201d.<\/p>\n
Asked at a press conference on Tuesday whether he regrets the phrasing he used when talking about Kimmel, Carr claimed \u201cthe full words that I said, the full context of the interview\u201d, were very clear.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a lot of Democrats, this has really been about distortion and projection,\u201d he added. He then accused Senate Democrats of hypocrisy, referring to calls in 2018 for the FCC to review Sinclair\u2019s \u201cfitness to retain its existing broadcast licenses\u201d over a controversial \u201cmust-run\u201d video that its stations were forced to broadcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe very same Democrats that are saying that I said something that I didn\u2019t are the same ones that engaged in that exact same type of conduct that they claim I did,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
With Kimmel now back on air, Carr suggested the entire episode was actually a win for local broadcasters \u2013 and a necessary check on the control of New York- and Hollywood-based broadcasters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we saw over the last two weeks was, probably for the first time in maybe 20 or 30 years, local TV stations \u2013 the actual licensed entities that are tied to specific communities \u2013 pushing back and saying that they did not want to run particular national programs,\u201d he said. \u201cThey felt like they could stand up for themselves. I think it\u2019s a good thing. And I hope that we can see potentially more of that going ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked by the Guardian whether he was disappointed that Nexstar and Sinclair chose to bring back Kimmel\u2019s show, Carr said he did not expect the pre-emption to last \u201cfor any sort of real sustained period of time\u201d due to the economic pressures the companies were facing. \u201cThese were decisions ultimately were for them to make,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
During the meeting, Anna M Gomez, the lone Democrat on the commission, called out Carr\u2019s comments \u2013 as he sat a few feet away. \u201cThis FCC threatened to go after [ABC], seizing on a late night comedian\u2019s comments as a pretext to punish speech it disliked,\u201d she said. \u201cThat led to a new low of corporate capitulation that put the foundation of the first amendment in danger.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Gomez has been very critical of Carr\u2019s leadership, she has largely refrained from attacking him personally, and has said that she maintains a good working relationship with him.<\/p>\n
While the FCC meets monthly, Tuesday\u2019s gathering took on added significance and excitement. Outside the FCC building, a mobile billboard truck \u2013 organized by the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders \u2013 carried the message: \u201cGovernment can\u2019t control media content.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inside, the meeting room was unusually packed. Several protesters, organized by the progressive political action organization Our Revolution, wore T-shirts that said: \u201cFederal Censorship Commission\u201d. A few stood up during the meeting and yelled: \u201cFire Carr, the censorship czar,\u201d and were quickly removed. One sign played on Carr\u2019s tough talk to television networks, telling the FCC commissioner: \u201cBrendan, We Can Do This the Easy Way (You Quit) or the Hard Way (You\u2019re Fired).\u201d<\/p>\n
When told by the Guardian that the \u201clengthy\u201d (in Carr\u2019s words) agenda for the monthly FCC meeting included seven wonky action items, one protester expressed frustration that they hadn\u2019t eaten breakfast before arriving early. The man left before the meeting concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brendan Carr, the tough-talking, pro-Trump chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), claimed on Tuesday that Democrats and the media had \u201cmisrepresented\u201d critical comments he made about Jimmy Kimmel\u2019s late-night talkshow. Television conglomerates including Nexstar and Sinclair opted to pull the show for \u201cbusiness\u201d reasons, Carr argued, not because of anything he said. \u201cThere was<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[794,2431,1891,4698,235,441,278,5841,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-25010","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-administration","9":"tag-chair","10":"tag-claims","11":"tag-fcc","12":"tag-jimmy","13":"tag-kimmel","14":"tag-networks","15":"tag-threatened","16":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25010","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=25010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}