WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Wednesday, late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel announced his show would not air an interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico. He claimed the President and the FCC “threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network, ABC, our affiliates, our local stations, based on simple, traditional editorial decisions: guest bookings it would seem they don’t like.”
Kimmel’s comments are the latest apparent instance in which pressure from the administration has impacted content airing on entertainment shows. Late last month, the President shared online that he was reporting NBC’s Kristen Welker “to the FCC for rebuke or punishment” because of her comments about his record of endorsing candidates for office.
“This is a pattern of the FCC that he is asking the FCC, and sort of expects the FCC to increasingly enforce what he thinks sort of right form of broadcasting, the right viewpoints online,” said David Inserra, a fellow for free expression and technology with the CATO Institute. “And we see this in the way the FCC is acting currently very aggressively enforcing its view of thee public interest standard in various other policies that ultimately come down to: does the President like this or not. I think that’s very harmful. but on the other hand, I do think it’s fair for the President generally or any American to criticize the press. The press can be criticized; they can get things wrong. He himself criticized Kristen Welker by saying look my own view of my record and he pushes back with his own record. I think that’s fine if you want to provide your own evidence if they’re wrong, and do so but that’s the right answer. Not sicking the FCC on them.”
We asked Inserra about the FCC’s authority for these issues surrounding content:
“The FCC does unfortunately have some authority here that is called the news distortion policy and other similar policies that say well we can enforce things that we believe are objectively false, that we have some authority here to do this in the public interest standard,” said Inserra. “Once again this sort of neutral sounding principle but ultimately what it is the FCC sort of saying we believe we can effectively police misinformation. We wouldn’t accept this in any other area of media, the New York Times, the Washington journal; we don’t do this for newspaper, we don’t accept it on cable TV.”
Inserra adds the FCC has some authority and they’re pushing it aggressively. “I think it’s clearly unconstitutional but it’s citing these older principles, these older precedents and say actually we do have the ability to do this and that’s what the president I think is counting on doing here and even if it doesn’t go to court, the threat of it alone can change the behavior of journalists.”
We reached out to the FCC for comment but did not hear back.
