Let’s make our view clear right off the top. We have arrived at a fraught moment in our nearly 250-year experiment known as democracy.

We are in the wake of a terrible act of political violence. From what we know as of writing this, a lone gunman decided to take the life of an outspoken and controversial political figure as he was speaking on the campus of a Utah university last week. In the days that have followed, the rhetoric on nearly all points of the political spectrum has been supercharged by social media platforms that actually profit from a lack of civil discourse, antagonized by anonymous agitators and egged on by autonomous bots from hostile actors.

With little hard evidence or proof of any real substance, each side has accused the other of somehow being responsible for the single shot that ended Charlie Kirk’s life. And that act requires this simple declaration: no matter your opinion of the man’s words, he had the absolute right to express them, without fear or threat to his life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness.

He had the same guarantee to that right as every Man, Woman, or Child in this country. The founders of this nation said so in The Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

There is absolutely no pretense that can be a justification in any way for the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Nor is there one for the assassination of Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband in June. Both killings are equally heinous and should be resoundingly denounced by all. The perpetrators should be prosecuted to the full extent of our justice system and subject to the maximum penalty if found guilty of those crimes.

Civilized people should not debate this. We can and should debate policy, big and small. We can challenge each other on ideas and beliefs. We can practice real citizenship, defending the rights of those with whom we disagree the most. Their equality requires the right to express their views, thoughts, and beliefs, even when they differ entirely from our own. But democracy demands that they defend our equal rights as well.

The Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution spells this out rather clearly in the First Amendment:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Freedom of Religion. Freedom to Worship. Freedom of Speech. Freedom of the Press. Freedom to Assemble and Protest in a peaceable manner.

Those things are bedrock to our democracy. No one person or the many elected to represent us can deny these rights. Our nation has fought wars over these rights, both on our own soil and that of other nations. Two of those wars were large enough to be called World Wars. Too many of those who have worn our country’s uniforms in military service have made the ultimate sacrifice to secure these rights.

Free Speech and a Free Press are two hallmarks of our democracy. Our founding fathers could not have conceived of the Internet. They couldn’t have conceived of “the media” much beyond the printing press back when the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. It would be nearly 100 years more before Edison made the electric light bulb practical. Then, 40 more years passed before the first commercial radio broadcast. And 20 more years before television.

Congress would constitute an agency to regulate the newly found airwaves "in the public interest, convenience, or necessity." Originally called the Federal Radio Commission, the Federal Communications Commission would succeed it under the Communications Act of 1934. The Commission’s purview has been expanded over the years to oversee all communications by radio, television, wire, internet, Wi-Fi, satellite, and cable across the United States.

But it is Broadcasting, the operation of the nation’s radio and television stations, where the FCC has unique authority. Because of the fundamental idea that the broadcast spectrum is a finite resource, the FCC licenses all radio and television stations. It has always required that broadcasters operate “in the public interest.” The process of obtaining and renewing a broadcasting license requires proof that a broadcaster demonstrates how their services meet the needs of the communities in which they operate.

Other than regulating content deemed to be obscene or unlawful in some manner, the FCC has typically not told broadcasters what content should be in the programs they air. Even the doctrine that required political balance in broadcast programming was removed in 1987, when the FCC determined that its own “fairness doctrine,” which had been in place since 1949, had “a chilling effect on free speech.” The FCC’s move came after Congress passed a bill to codify the fairness doctrine into federal law. President Ronald Reagan then vetoed the bill, calling it “antagonistic to the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment."

Fast forward to September 17th, 2025. The current chairman of the FCC, Brendan Carr, made this declaration on Fox News: “We at the FCC are going to force the public interest obligation. There are broadcasters out there that don’t like it, they can turn in their license in to the FCC,” Carr said. “But that’s our job. Again, we’re making some progress now.”

The progress that Carr is referring to is that earlier in the evening, the ABC television network announced it was suspending indefinitely the production and airing of its late-night show “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” The network took the unprecedented step following growing criticism over this comment made by host Jimmy Kimmel on Monday night’s show: “We hit 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 doing everything they can to score political points from it."

FCC Chairman Carr joined a backlash of growing criticism of Kimmel, primarily from the right, in an interview on Wednesday. That’s when he told podcaster Benny Johnson that Kimmel’s remarks were “a concerted effort to lie to the American people.” Carr went on to not so subtly threaten the nation’s broadcasters directly, stating, “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.” 

Shortly after Carr’s remarks were released, the nation’s largest television station owner, Nexstar, told ABC that 32 of its stations, which are ABC affiliates, would be “preempting” Kimmel’s TV show for the foreseeable future.” As the taping for Wednesday night’s edition of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” was about to get underway in Hollywood, CEO Bob Iger and Television head Dana Walden of The Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC, made the decision to suspend the program, according to reporting from The New York Times.

Kimmel’s remarks were seen differently by Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic appointed commissioner on the FCC. She told CNN’s Erin Burnett in a Wednesday night interview: “I saw the clip. He did not make any unfounded claims, but he did make a joke, one that others may even find crude, but that is neither illegal nor grounds for companies to capitulate to this administration in ways that violate the First Amendment,” Gomez went on to say, “This sets a dangerous new precedent, and companies must stand firm against any efforts to trade away First Amendment freedom.”

By later Wednesday evening, another large owner of ABC affiliates, Sinclair Broadcast Group, weighed in and said that it had told ABC before it announced it was suspending Kimmel’s show that it would also be preempting the program across its ABC-affiliated stations. Sinclair also said it planned to replace Kimmel’s program this Friday night with a one-hour tribute to the late Charlie Kirk.

We couldn’t help but remember when Sinclair pre-empted a special edition of ABC’s “Nightline” back in 2004. The Nightline special called “The Fallen” featured host Ted Koppel reading the names of the 700-plus U.S. servicemen and women who had died in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Sinclair said at the time that the program “appears to be motivated by a political agenda to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq.” History would note that the primary motivation for Operation Iraqi Freedom was to disarm Iraq and its leader, Saddam Hussein, of “weapons of mass destruction.”

A reminder that no such weapons were ever located.

It should be noted that both Nexstar and Sinclair have business reasons to heed the intent of the comments made by FCC Chairman Carr. Nexstar will likely need FCC approval to acquire major broadcast group owner Tegna, announcing its intention to do so just one day after a news report stated that Sinclair was proposing its own merger with Tegna. Either deal would be worth billions of dollars, and the FCC's most recent experience in “slow walking” the Paramount-Skydance deal shows that the commission can make it significantly more challenging to get a deal done in the media world now.

At the end of the day, we certainly acknowledge that broadcasters have the authority to determine what they air on their stations. They alone are responsible for the federal licenses that allow them to be in business. Networks are also free to decide on what they produce and distribute to their affiliates. These are businesses that have the right to operate as they see fit. But audiences also have the right to watch what they want to, and last we checked, every screen comes with both a way to change what is shown on it--or even to turn it off, if so desired by the viewer.

History will be the ultimate judge of the wisdom of the decision to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air, for however long that might be. But ABC’s decision doesn’t mean that he will be off for good. Given the state of the media universe and the choices available to viewers, it is likely that there will be ways for him and competitor Stephen Colbert to appear on other platforms after their network contracts end.

Because these days, A.J. Libeling’s 1960 quote "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one” has a very different context, especially in a world where almost anyone can have their own TV show that can be seen by millions.

The FCC Chairman told Sean Hannity on Fox News Wednesday night that “This is an important turning point."

We suspect that he has no idea just how big of one it might actually turn out to be.

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