By Michael Lyle, Nevada Current
This piece was originally published in the Nevada Current.
Jimmy Kimmel’s indefinite suspension from his late night television job after a Trump administration official publicly urged ABC and its parent company Disney to “take action on Kimmel” prompted warnings of government censorship from several quarters Thursday, including congressional Democrats, former President Barack Obama, and, closer to home, the ACLU of Nevada, and Nevada Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen.
Athar Haseebullah, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada, along with the civil liberties nonprofit’s legal director Chris Peterson, took to a social media broadcast Thursday to fold the Kimmel issue into the many recent efforts to chill free speech.
The Nevada organization normally focuses on “dire and grave threats” to the rights of Nevadans, Haseebullah noted, but the network yanking Kimmel from his show after being urged to act by Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr “raises a series of issues.”
The late night host on Monday commented on the Republican response to the death of Republican activist and influencer Charlie Kirk during his opening monologue.
“We hit 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 doing everything they can to score political points from it,” he said at the time.
Carr, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission, an independent agency that regulates various communication platforms like broadcast, told a right-wing commentator that “These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Haseebullah said Kimmel’s monologue wasn’t “bombastic” and didn’t use obscene or prohibitive language that could result in an FCC fine.
“He never called for a threat, he never broke a First Amendment rule. He never violated a free speech principle,” he said. “This is basically saying ‘we don’t like what he said, let’s cancel him.’”
After Carr urged ABC to “take action,” Nexstar Media Group, one of the nation’s largest owners or local TV stations, announced its ABC affiliates would be preempting Kimmel’s show “for the foreseeable future.”
ABC subsequently yanked Kimmel from the air.
Nexstar is currently in the process of a $6.2 billion merger with a media company called Tegna, a deal that will require approval from the FCC.
“You have a government official who’s in charge of potentially approving an FCC deal that’s $6 billion,” Haseebullah said, adding the FCC was “potentially shutting down that type of communication by issuing veiled threats.”
Peterson, the legal director for the ACLU of Nevada, said ABC’s decision to pull content wouldn’t normally raise any flags.
“They’re a private company and they can choose what they want to do,” he said. “But if you start following the links – I don’t think this administration is being subtle about it – back to what’s going on here, where the source was for this pulling, then you start having First Amendment chilling.”
Democratic U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen sent a letter Thursday asking Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz to hold a hearing to investigate Carr’s “threat to revoke public broadcasting licenses under its public interest authority in order to compel networks to censor programming with which he disagrees.”
“The government censoring speech it disagrees with is what happens in dictatorships, not democracies,” Rosen, a member of the Commerce Committee, said in a statement announcing the letter. “This isn’t about whether someone likes Jimmy Kimmel’s jokes or not; it is about the fact that every American has the right to speak without government interference.”
The ACLU’s virtual discussion Thursday comes amid a flurry of actions in the aftermath of Kirk’s death that are prompting people to question what qualifies as attacks on free speech.
A number of Nevadans have been dismissed or reprimanded for social media posts about Kirk’s death, raising questions about whether being terminated or suspended for posting on private social media is a violation of individual rights.
Not wanting to give specific legal advice, Haseebullah and Peterson spoke more broadly about employee rights to free speech, which they characterized as a gray area that depends on a variety of factors.
Some of the variables include whether an employee works for a private company versus a government entity.
“The ultimate qualifier for all of this is if you’re part of a union, and that union has signed a collective bargaining agreement that includes a portion with respect to speech,” Haseebullah said.
Peters added in those cases, “go check your contract.”
Censorship and attacks on free speech isn’t anything new, Haseebullah said, noting as an example crackdowns on people protesting against Israel’s actions against the people in Palestine, including blocking food and aid relief to Gaza, as well as Congress continuing to provide billions of dollars in military aid to Israel.
“We know there’s been censorship for a number of years on different issues,” Haseebullah said. “We’ve seen that happening for a while. But since January, it seems like it’s exploded.”
While flying home for the United Kingdom, Donald Trump Thursday praised Carr, and complained about TV network coverage of him and his presidency, saying “maybe their licence should be taken away.”