Before ABC announced that Jimmy Kimmel would return to his show on Tuesday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr sought to explain what he meant last week when he warned ABC and its stations that “we can do this the easy way or the hard way” in addressing the late-night host’s remarks about the suspect in Charlie Kirk‘s assassination.
At the Concordia Summit in New York on Monday morning, Carr denied that he had threatened to pull licenses of ABC stations if they did not fire Kimmel. He said that “did not happen in any way, shape or form.”
Carr said that “what I spoke about last week is that when concerns are raised about news distortion … there’s an easy way for parties to address that and work that out. In the main, that takes place between local television stations that are licensed by the FCC and what we call national programmers like Disney. They work that out, and there doesn’t need to be any involvement of the FCC.”
“Now, if they don’t, there’s a way that is not as easy, which is someone can file a complaint at the FCC, and then the FCC, by law, as set up by Congress, has to adjudicate that complaint,” Carr said. “And what I’ve been very clear in the context of the Kimmel episode, is the FCC, and myself in particular, have expressed no view on the ultimate merits.”
On his late-night show earlier last week, Kimmel said, “We had 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 with everything they can to score political points from it.”
Later in the week, Carr, appearing on Benny Johnson’s podcast, called Kimmel’s remark “some of the sickest conduct possible.”
Carr said, “Frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” Carr seemed to suggest remedies for ABC, or ways that they could avoid a lengthy proceeding. He said, “Look, there’s calls for Kimmel to be fired. You could certainly see a path forward for suspension over this. Again, the FCC is going to have remedies that we can look at. We may ultimately be called to be a judge on that.”
Hours later, Nexstar stations said that they were pulling Kimmel “for the foreseeable future.” Soon after, ABC announced that it was pulling the show indefinitely. After a backlash that the network had caved to pressure from the Trump administration, the network announced that Kimmel would return on Tuesday.
In his Monday remarks, Carr referred to the possibility of the FCC reviewing a news distortion complaint against ABC stations over Kimmel. The conservative group Center for American Rights did just that on Wednesday, the same day as Kimmel’s suspension.
The FCC has a news distortion policy, but the agency cautions that its authority to take action on complaints is “narrow” — and it rarely has. “The FCC will only investigate claims that include evidence showing that the broadcast news report was deliberately intended to mislead viewers or listeners,” the agency says. Kimmel is a talk show, not a news programming, although the host was commenting on current events.
Carr also criticized Democrats on Capitol Hill, pointing out their past efforts to go after Sinclair Broadcast Group over its program content. He was referring to a letter that Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and other senators sent to then-FCC Chairman Ajit Pai urging him to “investigate Sinclair’s news activities to determine if it conforms to the public interest.” They raised concerns about the uniform scripting of news programs across Sinclair stations and whether that amounted to news distortion.
Carr said that there were “Democrats out there that are engaged in a campaign or projections and distortion, and distortion is they are completely misrepresenting the work of the FCC and what we’ve been doing.”
But some Republicans also have been critical of Carr’s comments, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) calling them “right out of Goodfellas.” On his podcast last week, Cruz also said that he interpreted Carr as threatening “to cancel ABC’s license.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) also weighed in on Monday afternoon, posting on X, “Well, my colleague, Ted Cruz, said it looked just like Goodfellas. As a First Amendment guy, myself, I think he’s probably got it right. You don’t have to like what somebody says on TV to agree that the government shouldn’t be getting involved here.”
