Another in an ongoing series:
Dear Senator McCormick;
I am a constituent of yours and I'd like to ask you a few questions. Last week, I sent this same question to your senatorial colleague, Senator Fetterman and I am awaiting his replay. I wouldn't ordinarily do this but the issue is so pressing, I must.
I'd like to ask you about the First Amendment implications of Jimmy Kimmel's "indefinite suspension."
The New York Times reported:
ABC announced on Wednesday evening that it was pulling Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show “indefinitely” after conservatives accused the longtime host of inaccurately describing the politics of the man who is accused of fatally shooting the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
The abrupt decision by the network, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, came hours after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, assailed Mr. Kimmel and suggested that his regulatory agency might take action against ABC because of remarks the host made on his Monday telecast.
The network did not explain its decision, but the sequence of events on Wednesday amounted to an extraordinary exertion of political pressure on a major broadcast network by the Trump administration.
And:
Mr. Carr, in an interview on a right-wing podcast on Wednesday, said that Mr. Kimmel’s remarks were part of a “concerted effort to lie to the American people,” and that the F.C.C. was “going to have remedies that we can look at.”
“Frankly, when you see stuff like this — I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Mr. Carr told the podcast’s host, Benny Johnson. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the F.C.C. ahead.”
On the other hand, FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez issued a statement that read, in part:
This FCC does not have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to police
content or punish broadcasters for speech the government dislikes. If it were to take the
unprecedented step of trying to revoke broadcast licenses, which are held by local stations
rather than national networks, it would run headlong into the First Amendment and fail in
court on both the facts and the law. But even the threat to revoke a license is no small
matter. It poses an existential risk to a broadcaster, which by definition cannot exist
without its license. That makes billion-dollar companies with pending business before the
agency all the more vulnerable to pressure to bend to the government’s ideological
demands.
First, let me point out one thing: Carr asserted that the FCC has remedies to "look at" news organizations that lie to the American People but didn't Fox News lie about the Dominion voting machines?
Anyway back to The First Amendment. As a reminder to you it reads, in part:
Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech.Senator, simple question. Do you agree with FCC Chair Carr or FCC Commissioner Gomez?
I'll await your answer.
As always, I'll post here whatever answer I get from you or your office, Senator.
