Disney is fighting back against President Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission. The company bowed to government pressure last year when it briefly suspended ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. But now the FCC is taking aim at ABC programs and broadcast licenses. The network and its parent company are defending what they say are “bedrock First Amendment principles.”
The White House has mounted a “multifront war against the media” since Trump’s return to office last year, said The New York Times. That war includes FCC scrutiny of TV programs that have raised the president’s ire. The agency is currently investigating whether ABC’s “The View” violated federal rules requiring broadcasters to “give equal time to political candidates from both parties” when it interviewed Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico in February. That rule has been applied to entertainment programming. News shows have long been largely exempt, however, and the FCC ruled in 2002 that “The View” belongs in the latter category. “Nothing about ‘The View’ that the law cares about has changed” since that decision, the company said this week in an official filing, per the Times.
The network’s response to the FCC was “fiery,” said The Wrap. The Trump administration has “trained its attention on daytime and late-night television” programs that are “perceived as unfriendly to the current administration,” ABC said, per the outlet. But the First Amendment “does not permit the government to sit in an editor’s chair” nor to “grade speech by its viewpoint and decide who is a ‘real’ journalist and what is ‘real’ news.”
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The FCC has received an “unprecedented 77,611 comments” from the public regarding the investigation, said TV Tech. ABC in June asked viewers for their support in its “free-speech fight” against the government, said CNN. The FCC “wants to control who is allowed to appear on the show,” the network said in one advertisement, per CNN.
‘More legal leverage’
Disney’s “aggressive defense” of “The View” is a “notable departure” from its previous acquiescence to the president, said Axios. In addition to its quickly rescinded suspension of Kimmel, the network in 2024 paid $16 million to settle a Trump lawsuit filed over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ comments about E. Jean Carroll’s sexual assault defamation case. ABC has “more legal leverage now” that the administration’s attempts to punish media companies have run into a series of adverse court rulings.
Other challenges remain. A group of “prominent conservative organizations” has petitioned the FCC to deny license renewals for eight local stations owned and operated by ABC, said The Guardian. The network “cozies up to the Communist Chinese Party and airbrushes over religious and ethnic cleansing,” the Center for American Rights said in a filing with the agency, per the outlet. There is “no clear timeline” to resolve that case.
