Speaking once again on concerns about free speech following ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, Donald Trump turned to network news coverage of him, calling it “illegal” because of his claim that so much of the reporting is negative on his administration.
Trump cited a report that news coverage of him is “97% bad.”
“They’ll take a great story, and they will make it bad,” Trump said. “See, I think that’s really illegal. Personally. … You are getting free airwaves from the United States government, and you can’t have that.”
He added, “That’s no longer free speech. That’s just cheating, and they cheat. They become really members of the Democrat National Committee. That’s what they are, The networks, in my opinion. They are just offshoots of the Democrat National Committee.”
Trump’s remarks follow one on Thursday, in which he said that, given the negative coverage, “Maybe their license should be taken away.”
Trump has called for networks to lose their broadcast licenses before, but his remarks have drawn a new level of attention in the wake of comments made earlier this week by his FCC chairman, Brendan Carr.
On Benny Johnson’s podcast on Wednesday, Carr commented on the furor over Jimmy Kimmel’s remark about the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
In his monologue on Monday, Kimmel said, “We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it.”
On the podcast, Carr threatened ABC and its affiliates. Carr said that “we can do this the easy way, or these companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
House later, Nexstar announced that it was pulling Kimmel’s show “for the frseeable future.” Soon after that, ABC said that the show would be taken off the air “indefinitely.”
In the two days since then, there has been a backlash to ABC’s decision, with protests outside Disney’s studio in Burbank, while figures including Barack Obama and Michael Eisner have said that corporate executives have to stand up to the Trump administration.
The FCC actually has narrow authority over news content. “The agency is prohibited by law from engaging in censorship or infringing on First Amendment rights of the press,” the agency notes on its website. The rare instances are when broadcasters are found to have engaged in “news distortion.,” and those are only cases where “it can be proven that they have deliberately distorted a factual news report.”
As FCC chair, Carr has targeted the networks and media companies, on issues ranging from their news coverage to diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
Trump suggested that more of news coverage should reflect the size of his election win, while claiming that reporting on networks has been “97% bad.” He apparently was citing a report from the Media Research Center, a watchdog group on the right, which claimed in April that 92% of the coverage on the major networks in the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency was negative. MRC said that it looked at “1,841 evaluative statements about the Trump administration.” A Harvard Kennedy School study of Trump’s first 100 days in 2017 found that the tone of his coverage was 80% negative, although it focused not just on networks but some print outlets.
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