The Media Research Center’s war on Jimmy Kimmel ended up as a complete failure. A Sept. 26 post by comedy cop Alex Christy brought the sad news that the last two affiliate holdouts capitulated and would starting airing Kimmel’s show again:
Sinclair and Nexstar, the two major ABC affiliate owners that were still preempting Jimmy Kimmel Live!, announced on Friday that they are backing down.
In a statement, Sinclair said, “Our objective throughout this process has been to ensure that programming remains accurate and engaging for the widest possible audience. We take seriously our responsibility as local broadcasters to provide programming that serves the interests of our communities, while also honoring our obligations to air national network programming.”
It noted with disappointment, “In our ongoing and constructive discussions with ABC, Sinclair proposed measures to strengthen accountability, viewer feedback, and community dialogue, including a network-wide independent ombudsman. These proposals were suggested as collaborative efforts between the ABC affiliates and the ABC network. While ABC and Disney have not yet adopted these measures, and Sinclair respects their right to make those decisions under our network affiliate agreements, we believe such measures could strengthen trust and accountability.”
Addressing accusations that there were ulterior motives at play, Sinclair insisted, “Our decision to preempt this program was independent of any government interaction or influence. Free speech provides broadcasters with the right to exercise judgment as to the content on their local stations. While we understand that not everyone will agree with our decisions about programming, it is simply inconsistent to champion free speech while demanding that broadcasters air specific content.”
[…]Nexstar said in its own statement, “We have had discussions with executives at The Walt Disney Company and appreciate their constructive approach to addressing our concerns. As a local broadcaster, Nexstar remains committed to protecting the First Amendment while producing and airing local and national news that is fact-based and unbiased and, above all, broadcasting content that is in the best interest of the communities we serve. We stand apart from cable television, monolithic streaming services, and national networks in our commitment – and obligation – to be stewards of the public airwaves and to protect and reflect the specific sensibilities of our communities. To be clear, our commitment to those principles has guided our decisions throughout this process, independent of any external influence from government agencies or individuals.”
Once again, Christy failed to mention the ulterior motives both Sinclair and Nexstar might have in trying to please the Trump administration in censoring Kimmel — Nexstar is seeking Trump administration approval for its planned merger with Tegna, and Sinclair has always been a right-wing shill. Instead, he tried to find solace in his own explanation for their folding:
That did not happen, so what explains Sinclair and Nexstar’s reversal? It probably came down to a realization that any prolonged fight with ABC and Disney would not have ended well for them. Because Jimmy Kimmel Live! was off the air in around 25 percent of the country, ABC would have eventually been faced with a drop in ad revenue that could have led it to bring incredible pressure on Sinclair and Nexstar by threatening to withhold other programing including Monday Night Football.
Tim Graham whined the same day:
NPR’s Fresh Air lived down to its reputation as a Trump-hating leftist bubble on Wednesday as they discussed their hero Jimmy Kimmel and their presidential hate object on freedom of expression. Host Terry Gross brought on former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron and New York Times legal reporter Adam Liptak. It took Baron three sentences to compare Kimmel’s brief suspension to the Army-McCarthy hearings, as if anyone said Kimmel was a Soviet spy.
Baron’s statement that Trump has “denigrated. He’s demonized. He’s actually dehumanized the press thousands of times” caused Graham to go into a whataboutism freakout:
Denigrated, demonized, dehumanized – isn’t that what journalists en masse have done to Trump? Why do they fail to see that they exemplify what they protest? They haven’t tried to extinguish Trump’s political career, bankrupt him, and put him in jail? That he wants to Kill Democracy In Darkness?
And naturally, NPR & Co. don’t talk about the leftist celebration of deplatforming Trump and many other conservatives. To them, it’s only the “free press” blasting Trump that matters, not by “ordinary individuals.” Or maybe conservatives are dismissed as more evil and undeserving of free speech than the ordinary person.
Graham is not going to point out the difference between journalists and Trump — the former have no government power, while Trump has all the government power, which he can use to intimidate journalists. He also didn’t mention that Trump faced “deplatforming” because he incited a violent insurrection against the government.
Curtis Houck spent a Sept. 29 post grousing that Kimmel was defended:
On Sunday’s The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper, CNN host Jake Tapper spent an hour mourning the six-day suspension of ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel — a personal friend Tapper didn’t disclose — as dangerous for free speech, regardless of Kimmel’s vile comments about it on September 15.
Most disgusting was Tapper relegating the September 10 murder of Charlie Kirk to a supporting role, thus painting a narrative (via use of his time) that Kimmel’s suspension had more dangerous consequences than someone’s murder allegedly by someone who did so because of Kirk’s political views.
[…]Turning to Kimmel’s vile September 15 comments, Tapper falsely claimed Kimmel “wasn’t calling the shooter MAGA” and defended his friend by saying they were made “hours before…more details emerged about the alleged killer and his possible motive.”
With some help from senior legal analyst Elie Honig and New York Times reporter Jim Rutenberg, Tapper spun a conspiracy theory web of direct government censorship and collusion with local TV conglomerates Nexstar and Sinclair.
Actually, it’s not a conspiracy theory — Trump’s FCC chief, Brendan Carr, is very much on record as effectively threatening the broadcast licenses of ABC and its affiliates if Kimmel was not punished.
When it was pointed out that Kimmel and others are being targeted for their free speech, Houck sneered, “Note: All of the above can still speak. Charlie Kirk cannot.” He continued to whine further:
After an hour of painting Kimmel’s suspension as a dangerous attack on freedom, Tapper cowardly returned to Kirk’s murder as though it’s an afterthought: “While Jimmy Kimmel is back on the air, Charlie Kirk’s voice was silenced forever when he was tragically killed, and in this time of escalating partisanship, both sides can at least hopefully agree on this, the First Amendment is a right that is fundamentally American.”
However, Tapper immediately turned to Trump being the real threat to speech, wondering if we’re “an era where free speech is under an attack in a way we haven’t seen in a long time,”adding in one last question to Lukianoff: “What do you want people to know, just like that the price for a free society is that sometimes people are going to offend you?”
“[W]e take freedom of speech for granted and we will really regret when it’s gone,” Lukianoff replied, calling it an inevitable conclusion of “liv[ing] in communities that are more politically homogeneous.”
Houck somehow failed to find something offensive in those remarks to rant about.
(Again: We don’t recall any MRC employee insisting that Rush LImbaugh’s disgusting remarks about Sandra Fluke were “vile.”)
Catherine Salgado tried her own bit of whataboutism in a Sept. 30 post:
CNN is once again demonstrating gross hypocrisy on free speech.
Despite lacking evidence, CNN devoted an entire hour on Sunday to discussing unsubstantiated claims that the temporary suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live! was a result of pressure from the Trump administration. The leftist network’s alarmist stance on purported government censorship is surprising, given that it has spent years advocating for censorship and ignoring or defending government-Big Tech censorship collusion. Even more troubling is that it has likely never aired a similar program highlighting the 57 Biden-era censorship initiatives exposed by the Media Research Center.
Actually, most of those “censorship initiatives” called out lies and misinformation on social media. It’s not explain how correcting the record and stopping lies constitutes “censorship.”
Alex Christy returned to comedy-cop patrol in an Oct. 1 post complaining that Kimmel and Stephen Colbert commiserated about their respective situations:
ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel and CBS’s Stephen Colbert guested on each other’s respective Tuesday shows, and the former’s recent suspension was naturally a topic of interest. However, the reason why ABC suspended Kimmel in the first place went unmentioned, but there was still plenty of attacks on “that son of a bitch,” President Trump, and mutual back patting.
[…]Later, Colbert brought Trump into the conversation, “You started as a radio, you know, disc jockey as you said. When you were, you know, spinning platters and making with the banter. Did you ever think the president of the United States would be celebrating your unemployment?”
Again doing his best to avoid his actual comments, Kimmel replied, “I mean, that son of a bitch, you know, is really unbelievable… I never thought we would have a president like this, and I hope we don’t have another president like this again. I never even imagined there would ever be a situation in which the president of our country was celebrating hundreds of Americans losing their jobs. Somebody who took pleasure in that—that, to me, is the absolute opposite of what a leader of this country is supposed to be.”
Over at Jimmy Kimmel Live! Colbert played a behind-the-scenes clip of him reacting to the news that Kimmel was being taken off the air before recalling, “So, there’s no signal in the Ed Sullivan Theater, so it didn’t tell me why, there was no rationale given, just that you had been yanked.”
[…]Of course, Kimmel did do something wrong. He gave credence to the vilest of conspiracy theories about the political affiliation of Charlie Kirk’s assassin, and even when he returned to ABC, he did not address those conspiracies.
Says the guy whose employer gave credence to vile conspiracy theories about the 2020 election that were designed to fluff Trump rather than seek the truth and which helped incite a riot at the Capitol.