You don’t like him? Don’t watch him. But if you think it is legal or appropriate for the government to push or comment on firing individuals, including media personalities, for opinions they don’t like, then you are jettisoning one of the foremost principles of the Constitution, democracy, and freedom.
— Nell Minow, LinkedIn comment
As someone who was censored multiple times by Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, I understand the dangers of silencing contrarian voices. My “offenses” included citing a peer-reviewed article in one of the world’s most respected medical journals questioning Pfizer’s Covid vaccine trial and commenting on a column published in the Wall Street Journal. Admittedly, I’m not an infectious disease or vaccine expert, but academics from the world’s once prestigious universities were silenced too.
That experience taught me censorship isn’t just about suppressing bad information; it’s about consolidating control and deciding who gets to determine acceptable speech.
So yes, I am very much a free-speech advocate. I’m also alarmed when the head of the FCC declares that an inaccurate “joke” by Jimmy Kimmel — his implication that the “MAGA gang” was ultimately responsible for Charlie Kirk’s murder — amounted to a “concerted effort to lie to the American people,” and that the FCC would be “looking at remedies.”
Government regulators threatening remedies for the mediocre talents of late-night hosts should concern everyone, regardless of party or politics.
For the record: I never called for Kimmel’s ouster. What I did say was that Kimmel’s remark wasn’t funny, wasn’t insightful, and seemed designed only to provoke. That’s hardly an argument for censorship. Yet Nell Minow — the media’s go-to authority on corporate governance — accused me of wanting to jettison the Constitution, democracy, and freedom.
Here’s a nuance guaranteed to get me attacked from both sides: while Trump was appallingly clueless and out of line in celebrating Kimmel’s suspension, the New York Times reported the decision wasn’t made in Washington. It came from Disney CEO Bob Iger and Dana Walden, Disney’s television chief whose coziness with Kamala Harris raised questions about ABC News’ fitness to host a presidential debate.
Kimmel’s ousting wasn’t “government censorship.” It was corporate calculation by Iger, one of the savviest and most ruthless CEOs, and his politically connected deputy.
Historical Perspective
Once upon a time, a broadcast license was considered a public trust. Owners had to be above ethical reproach, and the standard was enforced. In 1987, an FCC administrative law judge ruled RKO General unfit to hold licenses for 14 radio and TV stations after it lied to regulators, overcharged advertisers, and falsified records.
Can anyone seriously argue Comcast, which owns NBC and Peacock, would meet that kind of moral fitness test today? In 2016, the company paid a $2.3 million fine for billing customers for equipment they never ordered. Comcast’s top management had close ties to Joe Biden, and its broadcast networks dutifully reflected those ties.
The broadcast networks once had a legal obligation to provide balanced political coverage. That safeguard disappeared in 1987 when President Reagan’s FCC killed the Fairness Doctrine. Mark Fowler, Reagan’s appointee and a former broadcast industry lawyer, dismissed television as nothing more than “a toaster with pictures.” He insisted there was no scarcity of viewpoints because of the proliferation of cable channels.
The result was predictable: Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN built empires by preaching to partisan choirs.
R.I.P. Phil Donahue
Jimmy Kimmel isn’t the first host canceled to protect corporate interests. In 2003, MSNBC axed Phil Donahue — then the network’s highest-rated talk show host — because he opposed the Iraq War. At the time, MSNBC was owned by General Electric, a defense contractor with lucrative government business. The Iraq War was good for GE’s bottom line, so Donahue had to go.
The media barely protested. Why? Because most of the press was cheerleading the war, relying on the New York Times’ now-disgraced coverage of Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction. The Times even pushed out veteran foreign correspondent Chris Hedges because of his public opposition to the Iraq War — but the corporate media wasn’t clutching their pearls and bemoaning censorship then.
The Times’ own public editor later called the publication’s WMD reporting “a journalistic fiasco.”
Kimmel’s Hypocrisy
Kimmel, let’s be honest, is no Phil Donahue. He built his career co-hosting The Man Show, a Comedy Central ode to sexism featuring the “Juggy Dance Squad” and Kimmel in blackface as NBA star Karl Malone. His former girlfriend, comedian Sarah Silverman, also appeared in blackface. Somehow, both escaped cancellations. Meanwhile, NBC ousted Megyn Kelly for merely questioning why dressing in blackface was controversial.
The point isn’t to re-litigate old skits. It’s to show how arbitrary “cancel culture” is: selective outrage, guided less by principle than by political agendas.
Kimmel’s Free Speech Silence
Kimmel hardly makes a sympathetic character for free-speech advocacy. He was silent about Big Tech censoring conservative comedians. He was silent when comedians with more talent and genuinely insightful material, like Dave Chappelle, faced mounting calls for cancellation. He was silent when Twitter censored the Babylon Bee, a satirical publication that often mocked liberal hypocrisy.
More importantly, Kimmel never used his show to call out Disney for using ABC News and entertainment to promote its own business interests and management’s opposition to Donald Trump.
In 2020, an award-winning ABC News journalist named David Wright was secretly filmed admitting he was a “socialist” who favored universal health care, reining in corporations, and narrowing the wealth gap. Wright was also critical of ABC News’ coverage of Trump.
“We don’t hold him to account. We also don’t give him credit for what things he does do,” Wright said. “It’s like there’s no upside in — or our bosses don’t see an upside — in doing the job we’re supposed to do, which is to speak truth to power and hold people to account,” Wright said, confessing he felt badly because “the truth suffers” and “voters are poorly informed.”
Wright worked at ABC for nearly two decades. He covered the White House, served as the lead political reporter on Nightline during the 2016 presidential campaign, and handled a slew of overseas assignments, sharing an Emmy Award for his Iraq reporting and a Peabody Award for reporting in Afghanistan after 9/11.
Despite his distinguished career, Wright was suspended and demoted — and neither Kimmel nor anyone at ABC publicly came to his defense.
The Epstein Cover-Up
Kimmel and his ABC colleagues also never addressed a leaked video in 2020 of Amy Robach, co-host of 20/20, saying she had details years earlier about Jeffrey Epstein’s proclivities, including his connections to Prince Andrew and former President Bill Clinton, but claimed ABC News killed the story because of pressure from Buckingham Palace. Former ABC News president James Goldston reportedly dined with members of the Royal Family.
“We had everything,” Robach said in the accompanying video. “I tried for three years to get it on, to no avail. And now it’s all coming out and it’s like these new revelations and I freaking had all of it. I’m so pissed right now. Every day I get more and more pissed ’cause I’m just like, oh my god. What we had was unreal.”
After the video was released, Robach said ABC never killed her scoop and called the video “a private moment of frustration.”
Let’s not forget that NBC News spiked Ronan Farrow’s explosive reporting on disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, allegedly because Weinstein threatened to expose that one of the network’s biggest stars, Matt Lauer, was having sexual relations with co-workers.
Defending Offensive Speech
One of the biggest tests of defending free-speech rights is defending speech most people would find offensive. The ACLU famously defended the right of neo-Nazi leader Frank Collin to stage a rally in Skokie, Illinois — a community nearly half Jewish and home to hundreds of Holocaust survivors. That’s what real free-speech commitment looks like. Corporate media journalists, by contrast, only dust off their free-speech piety when it serves their agendas.
Corporate media worked in tandem with the Biden administration to silence critics who questioned government claims about Covid vaccine safety and effectiveness. They mercilessly attacked independent journalists like Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and others for exposing the collusion. And dare anyone call out the corporate press for hypocrisy, the response is a fusillade of labels: racist, sexist, xenophobe, transphobe — and intended as the most damning of all — a Trump supporter.
The media might want to do some soul-searching and reflect on why the public holds broadcast journalists almost in the same low regard as Congress. Maybe if they had honestly covered Joe Biden’s cognitive struggles, he wouldn’t have attempted another term, and Democrats would have had time to find a credible candidate to run against Trump. Instead, they presented the public with Kamala Harris, who trailed badly in her own state’s presidential primary.
The corporate news media lacks such self-awareness, and they openly despise the values of a big swath of the American public. For many Americans, Charlie Kirk’s appeal was that he said the things others were censored for. Kimmel’s crack about the “MAGA gang” and Kirk’s assassin wasn’t comedy; it was mockery, meant to fan the flames of division.
A companion to free-speech liberties is the right not to give a damn. The media is supposed to serve as the public’s watchdog, but its credibility is so badly tarnished that many Americans not only wouldn’t care if Trump euthanized the industry — they’d actually welcome it. The consequences of that mindset are a genuine threat to democracy.
When Comedy Made All Americans Laugh
Few Americans care whether Kimmel — who reportedly makes $15 million a year and has a net worth of $50 million — returns to the air. His ratings lagged Stephen Colbert, whose show CBS reportedly loses as much as $50 million a year.
It’s striking how different late-night comedy once was. Jay Leno could needle presidents, mock the media, and riff on everyday absurdities — all while keeping the country laughing together instead of dividing it into warring camps.
Yes, Leno made O.J. Simpson the butt of endless jokes, but he left no doubt he believed Simpson was guilty, acquittal or not.
Here’s a reminder of comedy from the days when it was still meant to make America laugh together — not tear the country apart.