"FCC Chair Brendan Carr's threat to ABC was the stuff of Hollywood cliché: "We can do this the easy way," the Trump appointee said in a recent interview , "or the hard way." In the preceding days, the network's Jimmy Kimmel Live! had become a target of conservative ire over Kimmel's remarks on the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. So, with its affiliates' broadcast licenses imperiled, ABC and its parent company, Disney, had opted for the easy way."
"Workers ranging from journalists to airline employees have been fired, and students expelled. Thirty-three House Republicans have called for the creation of a select committee to probe the "radical left's assault on America." Attorney General Pam Bondi promised, and then walked back, patently unconstitutional hate speech prosecution. Meanwhile, at the newly rechristened Department of War, journalists must function as Pentagon stenographers or risk losing their press passes."
FCC threats against broadcasters pressured a major network to suspend a late-night show after conservative backlash to remarks about a murdered right-wing activist. The administration and allied activists have pursued broad reprisals, resulting in firings, student expulsions, and calls from House Republicans for an investigatory select committee. A state attorney general threatened unconstitutional hate-speech prosecutions and later retreated. The defense apparatus demands compliant reporting from credentialed journalists under threat of losing press access. Senior officials and guest hosts publicly attacked independent outlets and spread misinformation, while presidential rhetoric dismissed critiques as overreaction to media cancellations.
Read at The Nation
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