News report documenting a television network's cancellation of a late-night talk show following regulatory pressure from Trump administration's FCC chair, implicitly framing this as a threat to press and entertainment freedom. The article exercises freedom of expression to report on governmental censorship, demonstrating active press freedom while addressing a human rights concern.
As much as I can tell, they're mad because Kimmel pointed out a couple of instances where Trump seemed to care more about his new ballroom at the WH than about the recent murder of Kirk.
I've been reluctant to toss around the f-word, but it doesn't feel like an exaggeration to call this fascism. Kimmel said nothing that should have warranted a suspension.
> The ABC late-night host’s remarks constituted “the sickest conduct possible,” FCC chair Brendan Carr told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson on Wednesday. Carr suggested his FCC could move to revoke ABC affiliate licenses as a way to force Disney to punish Kimmel.
Regardless of what Kimmel said and if you think it was appropriate or not, we are seeing this administration use this as an opportunity to trample on the free speech rights of everyone they disagree with. If everyone's rights are not protected, then nobody's are.
The era of TV-talk shows is already ending, so it's easy for companies to agree to censorship. These moves just quicken the end of the talk-show era. More profitable and successful shows seem to be immune for now, and South Park goes harder than ever.
I expected Kimmel to have somehow criticized Kirk, a dubious enough reason to pull the show. But this isn’t even that. Comments quoted in stories assert that the shooter was MAGA - maybe that’s somewhat controversial, but it’s ludicrous to suggest it’s offensive.
That paired with comments criticizing the Dear Leader were enough. This is a new low in corporate cowardice toward Trump bullying.
> ABC said it was pulling the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” show off the air “indefinitely” after controversial comments by its host about the slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
but the article says the following, which is entirely different:
> “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,” Kimmel said.
>
> “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving,” he added.
I am largely neutral on this particular assassination, as I knew almost nothing about Mr. Kirk prior to his departure (just name recognition & basic political associations).
But I do think, after decades of reflection, that comedians are correct when they point out that stereotypical humor shouldn't be off limits to any performer (of any background/color), but is... e.g. Owen Benjamin, Chappelle, Seinfeld.
I’m at a loss of what to watch as far as television goes in the US, between the government threatening to intervene in content, corporations that own television networks with little regard for journalistic integrity, and PBS downsizing. I’m pretty much exclusively watching NHK from Japan through a Roku app.
This feels like an overreach, maybe. The FCC does have the strange task of regulating "false information" [1], but in practice I don't think that gets invoked very often (I'm sure morning DJs would be fired en masse if they were actually held to the standard of proven, objective truth!)
I'm hoping that this is just the high watermark, and not the new standard.
Kimmel discussed the political response to Kirk's death, not the man, which is a class move that respects his family and the law. I can't see the problem.
How many companies, media people and politicians need to bend the knee before someone stands up and says this has all gone far enough?
Sensitive much? Not really the emotional intelligence and maturity one wants from an establishment running a country of 300 million people and all the problems that encapsulates.
The US is in all kinds of trouble and, unfortunately, the rest of the world is going to get some of it on them.
"I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Friday morning. "I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!"
Mel Brooks had the right of it. Fascism and Authoritarianism is defeated by satire and mockery. The ideology is too outrageous to survive any such scrutiny.
Why else would the administration be so afraid of a few jokes?
It really is kind of incredible. I just saw the clip and there really is absolutely nothing there. This is not even 10% as poignant of what Jon Stewart would say in his day. He doesn't even say anything about Kirk himself, or even about the murder—he just talks about the reaction to it.
I already thought it was very suspicious that Sinclair's official press release just talks about how the remarks were "inappropriate and deeply insensitive" without describing anything about the actual remarks. And it even calls for the FCC to get involved?
What this really says is: you should be very afraid, because we will completely demolish if it suits us and we don't need a pretext.
It's extremely relevant. The person grew up "conservative" and was radicalized to the left in college. The reason this is important is that it's a trend. If the trend isn't acknowledged on the left, then it will just continue.
Stop criticizing large corporations as moral entities. They have no other incentives other than money. Corporations are amoral (not good or bad). Only money matters.
South Park can go on because they make money. Talk-shows are already dying and cutting them is easy choice even under mild pressure.
The value talk they use is PR aimed at stakeholders (customers, employees, government). No company has taken a stance where they willingly accept net negative returns if they have other choice.
You don't have to disregard what Kimmel said, because he hardly even said anything. Relevant portion is the first 8 mins of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j3YdxNSzTk
What, in the clip, could reasonably be referred to as "the sickest conduct possible?" No one with a healthy, functioning mind could possibly use that language to talk about Kimmel's comments in that clip.
The 2nd part is the quote from Jimmy Kimmel that he said on air that caused the "controversy", that resulted in the FCC commissioner, Brendan Carr to go on a podcast and threaten ABC/Disney with retaliatory action if they refused to take Kimmel off the air.
CNN doesn't show a clip, but explains what was said & the events that caused this.
> “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,” Kimmel said.
Off topic, but has there been convincing evidence that the suspect is right wing/MAGA, as Kimmel implied? I've seen some posts on reddit to this effect, but they're far from convincing.
That is unironically what happened here. The comments Kimmel made here did not disparage Kirk, but rather the administration's reaction to his shooting.
In that case, going by the FCC's complaint against Kimmel, I wonder if my pointing out that Trump furthermore skipped Kirk's vigil to go golfing, is similarly "too offensive to be protected by the first amendment"?
The pedantic correction is important in this case: "cancellation" is a private action between citizens, this is "censorship", which is done at the behest of the government. The former can be arguably but reasonably understood as a market finding a balance between two opposing arguments, both of which have a first amendment right (i.e. I don't have to repeat others' words if I don't want to, even if I'm doing it out of self interest).
The government has no such right. Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.
Lots of people say things like "I know I should read, but it's this whole thing..." and then you find out they've been stuck on page 3 of Wuthering Heights for forty years, because someone convinced them they ought to be reading that, and it's haunted them from their night-stand ever since.
Don't let anyone tell you what to read, pick up something that sounds fun to you, and read it. Choosing to read something is always and in every circumstance better than sitting in front of a screen and passively yielding to whatever evening the advertisers have planned out for you.
> I am largely neutral on this particular assassination, as I knew almost nothing about Mr. Kirk prior to his departure (just name recognition & basic political associations).
This seems confusing to me. The default "neutral" position on any murder, most of all when you don't know much about the victim, is that murder is a horrible thing, is it not? Is that what you mean, or do you mean you aren't sure if this was good or bad?
Any human with their head screwed on straight innately assigns a very negative value weight to murder. To get yourself into a situation where you aren't sure about a murder would require you to have pretty strong beliefs about the victim or circumstance, which you claim to not have.
I'm somewhat convinced that (at least among the younger generation) the role that these talkshow hosts held has already been replaced by live streamers and podcasters. Even Conan has transitioned into primarily focusing on podcasts while others refused to adapt and stuck to the networks.
10 years ago I'm fairly certain these moves would have been met with a strong reaction from the public, but now nobody cares...
You didn't update your card after Colbert? Of course Jimmy was next to go. Just look at the comments from Trump directly at Kimmel. Nothing happened after Colbert which just emboldened for this move. This move will also go unchallenged which makes me think the next two shows will be right around the corner.
It’s absolutely an overreach and there’s no chance this is the high water mark. Things are going to get much, much worse before there’s any hope of things calming down.
I think everybody is (reasonably) confused by the use of the words "anything other than". It's usually used in phrases that express the speaker's opinion to the opposite ("as if this is anything other than performative" means "this is performative"). Based on the clip, it sounds like Kimmel unfortunately used it literally: "trying to portray [him] as anything other than...", as in, "they're jumping the gun on his portrayal and blame placement", and not, "I know which team he's on." I could be wrong, but that's what it sounds like in context (and would make more sense too).
You don't need dinosaur US mainstream media PBS, CNN or MSNBCNow. There's: Last Week Tonight, Thom Hartmann, Democracy Now, Keith Olbermann, and many more.
Assassination is stupid and counterproductive, even if the subject was a shameless, ethnonationalist supremacist who said mass shootings were the "price to pay" for 2a, because all that blackpill bozo did was turn him into an "innocent" victim, lionized martyr. Offended by everything, ashamed of nothing.
> that comedians are correct when they point out that stereotypical humor shouldn't be off limits to any performer (of any background/color), but is... e.g. Owen Benjamin, Chappelle, Seinfeld.
You're quoting a Chappelle joke that he made literally from a fucking netflix special. He's definitely been "cancelled" making millions off of trans jokes. Amazing evidence that comedy is illegal now. I honestly don't know how anyone could take this drivel seriously unless they literally only consume media from a very narrow selection of highly biased resources.
> I'm hoping that this is just the high watermark, and not the new standard.
I’ve been hearing a variation of this for at least 9 months. Can’t help but see Americans as frogs in the boiling water. Surely it can’t get hotter than this, can it?
Headline reports on and implicitly criticizes government threat to press freedom. Article frames FCC chair's threat as problematic action ('yanks indefinitely'), advocating for protection of media outlet's expression rights.
Observable Facts
Headline explicitly mentions 'threat from Trump's FCC chair Brendan Carr'
Article is publicly published and indexed, exercising press freedom
Inferences
Language choices ('threat', 'yanks') suggest editorial position critical of government pressure on media outlet.
Publication of story about censorship threat demonstrates active exercise of freedom of expression by news organization.
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SETL
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Headline frames government pressure on media outlet as problematic, implying advocacy for freedom and human dignity. Reporting on censorship threat to press freedom.
Observable Facts
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The use of 'threat' and 'yanks' in the headline suggests editorial framing critical of government pressure on media.
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Article 11Presumption of Innocence
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Observable Facts
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Personalized ad targeting via 'targeting' arrays in ad configuration
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Structural Channel
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Article 19Freedom of Expression
Medium Advocacy Framing
Structural
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SETL
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Structural
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No structural signals observable regarding equal treatment or non-discrimination.
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Article 2Non-Discrimination
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Supplementary Signals
Epistemic Quality
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Propaganda Flags
1techniques detected
loaded language
Words 'threat' and 'yanks indefinitely' carry negative connotations, framing government action as coercive rather than neutral.
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Event Timeline
20 events
2026-02-26 12:20
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2026-02-26 09:31
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Dead-lettered after 1 attempts: ABC yanks Jimmy Kimmel’s show ‘indefinitely’ after threat from FCC chair
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2026-02-26 07:16
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2026-02-26 07:12
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Dead-lettered after 1 attempts: ABC yanks Jimmy Kimmel’s show ‘indefinitely’ after threat from FCC chair
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2026-02-26 07:11
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Dead-lettered after 1 attempts: ABC yanks Jimmy Kimmel’s show ‘indefinitely’ after threat from FCC chair
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2026-02-26 07:11
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Dead-lettered after 1 attempts: ABC yanks Jimmy Kimmel’s show ‘indefinitely’ after threat from FCC chair
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2026-02-26 07:10
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Dead-lettered after 1 attempts: ABC yanks Jimmy Kimmel’s show ‘indefinitely’ after threat from FCC chair