Trump’s War on Media Expands With Jimmy Kimmel Suspension

(Bloomberg) — US presidents have long had adversarial relationships with the media — but no American head of state has taken the war on media to the extremes that Donald Trump has. By using, or threatening to use, the courts and his administration’s authority, Trump has forced a series of major concessions from the world’s largest media outlets.

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Walt Disney Co. stunned the industry Wednesday when ABC put Jimmy Kimmel’s show on indefinite hiatus, after a Sept. 15 monologue in which the popular comedian riffed on how Trump and his supporters reacted to the assassination of Republican activist Charlie Kirk. The segment had drawn a public rebuke earlier from Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

Disney’s move, on the heels of attacks from the White House on some of the biggest figures and companies in broadcasting and entertainment, shows Trump’s increasingly getting his way. In the process, he’s making media companies in the home of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine look like state-run outlets, according to interviews with media executives and academics.

On Thursday, Trump said US broadcast networks should face scrutiny over their licenses if they’re too critical of him, in what amounts to his furthest-reaching threat to media freedoms.

Media, academic institutions and American companies “are all bending to the will” of Trump’s administration, said Juan Manuel Benítez, a professor at Columbia University’s journalism school. “I don’t think it’s about being left, right or center. These are business decisions.”

For ABC, it wasn’t the network’s first run-in with the administration. In December, the network paid Trump $15 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that ABC News host George Stephanopoulos had defamed him.

Asked about ABC’s decision at a public event with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump said: “Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings, and they should have fired him a long time ago. So, you know, you can call that free speech or not. He was fired for lack of talent.”

Kimmel was just the latest industry personality to have run afoul of the administration.

Paramount Global, while trying to get its merger with Skydance Media approved by the FCC, paid $16 million in July to settle a lawsuit by Trump that claimed CBS News had edited an interview to favor his opponent Kamala Harris. The network then announced plans to end the late-night program of Stephen Colbert, a frequent Trump critic. Days later, the FCC approved the Skydance deal.

“I was always an advocate for settling the case because I felt it was really a distraction,” Shari Redstone, Paramount’s former chair, said at an Axios media conference Thursday.

Barry Diller, a longtime media and entertainment executive, told Bloomberg News he felt sorry for Redstone, who had “a guillotine” at her throat while trying to get her merger approved under pressure from the president.

The government holds sway over media outlets in many ways. The FCC could pull a TV station’s license to operate, although historically such instances have been rare and not often tied to content decisions.

In July, the Republican-controlled Congress stopped funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, squeezing public TV and radio stations that distribute programming from NPR and PBS.

During an appearance on a conservative podcast on Wednesday, FCC Chairman Carr criticized Kimmel and threatened to take action against ABC’s parent company.

“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” Carr said. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

Shortly after, Nexstar Media Group Inc., a large owner of ABC stations, said it was pulling Kimmel’s program.

What made the decision noteworthy is that Nexstar has business before the FCC and needs the agency’s approval to complete a $6.2 billion takeover of a competing broadcaster called Tegna Inc.

“The decision to preempt ! was made unilaterally by the senior executive team at Nexstar, and they had no communication with the FCC or any government agency prior to making that decision,” a Nexstar spokesman said.

To seal the deal, Nexstar will have to get the Trump administration to revise longstanding rules that limit the ownership of local stations. Carr recently said he’s in favor of those changes.

“I see this as a part of this administration’s campaign of censorship and control,” Anna Gomez, the FCC’s sole Democrat commissioner, said at the Axios conference. “It’s weaponizing its licensing authority in order to bring broadcasters to heel.”

Disney shares fell 1% on Thursday, while Nexstar rose slightly. Bloomberg reported that Disney executives and Kimmel planned to meet to discuss the future of the show.

While cable-TV stations and newspapers don’t have or need government licenses, the administration can make life difficult for their parent companies.

“The FCC is not functioning in the way that it normally has in the past,” PBS Chief Executive Officer Paula Kerger said at the conference. “You can’t look at any of the history to try to anticipate how it will act moving forward.”

Some outlets are fighting back. This week, the president sued The New York Times Co. for $15 billion, claiming it has long been biased against him.

“This lawsuit has no merit,” the Times said in response. “It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics.”

Many politicians and members of the creative community have denounced ABC’s suspension of Kimmel’s show. Democratic members of Congress have called for Carr to step down, citing overreach.

“Jimmy Kimmel being pulled off the air is a dire turning point for the state of free speech in America,” said Saul Austerlitz, a professor of comedy writing at New York University. “If Kimmel can be removed over a mild joke, the window of acceptable speech on television appears to have narrowed drastically and sharply in favor of conservative speech at the expense of all alternatives.”

“I was shocked, saddened and infuriated by yesterday’s suspension and look forward to it being lifted soon,” Damon Lindelof, the creator of the hit ABC drama , wrote on Instagram. “If it isn’t, I can’t in good conscience work for the company that imposed it.”

Even Bari Weiss’s news organization, the Free Press, a frequent ally of Republicans during censorship debates, took issue with the circumstances leading up to Kimmel’s benching.

“When a network dumps a star host just hours after a regulator’s barely veiled threat, it starts to look less like a business decision — and more like government coercion,” the publication wrote.

Despite the backlash, Trump has given no indication that he plans to change course. After the Kimmel news broke, he celebrated ABC’s decision and called on NBC to fire its late-night hosts, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers.

Later, on Air Force One, Trump said the FCC has every right to pull the broadcast licenses of stations that run content he doesn’t like.

“When you have a network and you have evening shows, and all they do is hit Trump,” the president said. “They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that. They’re an arm of the Democrat party.”

–With assistance from Edwin Chan and Vlad Savov.

(Updates with trading in 21st paragraph. An earlier version corrected spelling of a professor’s name.)

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