This, alongside the cancelling of Jimmy Kimmel today, raises all kinds of red flags. We're about to find out just how well the First Amendment holds up under an autocrat.
Just to clarify for anyone skimming: ABC faced pressure from FCC chair Brendan Carr after he said their broadcasting license was at risk from Kimmel's statements on Tyler Robinson, the alleged Kirk assassin.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/17/charlie-kirk-jimmy-kimmel-ab...
> “Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located,” said Andrew Alford, President of Nexstar’s broadcasting division. “Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue.”
This decision and their public statement about it, coupled with social media pressure, led ABC to making a decision afterwards about the show.
As for Carr - he is staunchly in support of first amendment rights. Politico wrote about this yesterday since he split from the rest of the GOP on broader censorship (https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/16/fcc-brendan-carr-so...). He also can’t take unilateral action - the commissioners would have to vote. But the FCC has a lot of content rules for the mediums they regulate, which have thus far held up in courts (although I find it questionable). In that sense, what he was suggesting may be legal (unfortunately).
Right, because he said this on a conservative podcast:
Hours earlier, FCC Chair Brendan Carr told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson that Kimmel’s comments were “truly sick,” and that there was a “strong case” for action against ABC and Disney.
“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
"“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."
It's still censorship even if the FCC has regulatory ability. Censorship is a type of action.
If the FCC bans porn before 10pm that's still censorship. You can argue whether it's justified or not
> If the FCC bans porn before 10pm that's still censorship. You can argue whether it's justified or not
I agree with both of these statements. But I don’t think that contradicts my point necessarily. I’m saying his approach is to do things that are censorship but are also legal, but to refuse to do things that are illegal even if there is political pressure to do so. I also noted in one of my other comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45284283) that I think it is unfortunate that the FCC has the authority to regulate content at all.
There are only court rulings that allow censorship of obscene material and the like
I get that you support the remarks he made yesterday, but I would like to know what you think of the remarks he made today.
FCC v. Pacifica Foundation
You don't know the true meaning of "fascist", so why do you misapply the word? Why don't you look the word up in a dictionary so you can reserve it to use it properly and find another word to use here?
"fascist" this! "fascist" that!
I hear all day in the news and none of the fools speaking has a clue what the word means. Nor do they seem to have a vocabulary large enough to house the appropriate words. Probably b/c they were demonstrating instead of studying in university class.
Try "bad" (that's what you mean!) instead of hiding behind a smokescreen of cryptic, archaic or important-sounding (to an idiot audience) wordings. But then fools like you always had no meaning. indeed:
"a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." - William Shakespeare
Fascism is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
Can you provide evidence for this? Right wing truisms are not sufficient.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/zuckerberg-says-the-wh...
Edit: can’t reply to comment below me but that quote is referring to the instances where the company pushed back. It’s not saying they didn’t comply at all - they absolutely did on many instances, and Zuckerberg admitted guilt over it. See later quote:
> “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today,” he said, without elaborating. “We’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.”
The officials “expressed a lot of frustration” when the company didn’t agree, he said in the letter.
I want to thank Nexstar for doing the right thing.
Local broadcasters have an obligation to serve the public interest. While this may be an unprecedented decision, it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming that they determine falls short of community values.
I hope that other broadcasters follow Nexstar’s lead.
Amusingly, one of the replies quotes Carr in 2019 saying 'The FCC does not have a mandate to police speech in the name of the 'public interest.''
Those red flags were (literally and figuratively) raised on January 6, 2021. After the events of that date, everyone had all the information and warnings to know what kind of person Trump is (wannabe dictator willing to use violence to achieve his ends) and what kind of movement MAGA is. We all had the opportunity to vote after that date, and people still chose Trump / MAGA. Now we see blatant authoritarianism, illiberal government actions, and rising political violence.
It's not surprising that the same guy who tried to violently overthrow the government would also try to overthrow the Constitution. What's happening today was predicted by people paying attention. The constitution is literally not operative right now, as there's no one to enforce it -- not the DOJ, not the FBI not the Congress, not the courts, not the press, not corporations, not the army, and certainly not the President.
The United States is a fascist dictatorship. It's not turning into one, it has already happened.