DEMOCRACY WATCHThe Government Shouldn’t Play “Truth Police”
There is little doubt that ABC’s decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was the result of the not-so-veiled threats by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr that the network would face FCC action unless it removed Kimmel who, Carr argued (wrongly), had implicated MAGA in the killing of Charlie Kirk. But the government should not serve as the arbiter of truth in public debate. Government coercion to censor speech is wrong no matter which party is in power. We should all be concerned when the government takes upon itself the role of policing “truth” and uses that mantle as a tool to threaten and punish disfavored speakers.
ABC has announced that it is suspending Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show indefinitely. This comes in the wake of two important events. First, Kimmel delivered a monologue in which he said that “The MAGA Gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.” And second, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in an interview that there is “a strong argument that” Kimmel’s monologue was “sort of an intentional effort to mislead the American people about a very core fundamental fact.” Carr also pointedly remarked that, “This is a very, very serious issue right now for [ABC parent company] Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
If ABC had taken action against Kimmel solely on its own volition, there would be no First Amendment problem. But given Carr’s remarks, there is strong reason to believe that ABC took action in part to avert his not-so-veiled threat of government action. My colleague Brent Skorup has explained how the Supreme Court wrongly allowed broadcast networks to have only “junior varsity” First Amendment rights, giving the FCC far too much power to regulate speech over the airwaves. And my colleague David Inserra has put this incident in the broader context of several government actions that have threatened free speech in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder.
In this post, I’ll focus on the problem with Carr’s stated justification for putting pressure on ABC: the inaccuracy of Kimmel’s implication that Charlie Kirk’s killer was “MAGA.” Regardless of the truth or falsity of Kimmel’s remark, the government should not serve as the arbiter of truth in public debate. To the extent the FCC has been granted that power and the Supreme Court has allowed the FCC to wield that power, this only demonstrates how out of step the law of broadcast television has become in comparison to the American free-speech tradition in other contexts.
