Just one day after ABC and Disney announced they were suspending the “Jimmy Kimmel Live” program, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr told an interviewer the federal agency might look at “The View” and its lopsided political content next.
The long-running daytime show features a panel of Trump-hating women famous for their scowling observations and hatred of anything conservative.
Recent AFN stories have described the show's co-hosts suggesting President Trump doesn't like "strong women" and a bizarre complaint because the president stayed quiet about plans for a B-2 attack on Iran.
“I think it's worthwhile,” Carr shared, “to have the FCC look into whether ‘The View,’ and some of these other programs that you have, [that] still qualify as 'bonified news programs' and [are] therefore exempt from the ‘equal opportunity’ regime that Congress has put in place.”
Carr, an FCC commissioner since 2017, was explaining to show host Scott Jennings the FCC oversees a broadcasting rule known as the equal opportunity rule. That rule, which requires equal time for opposing political candidates, has an exception for “bona fide news” that is exempted from a both-sides format.
“And potentially, I would assume, you can make the argument ‘The View’ is a bona fide news show,” he said. “I’m not so sure about that.”
In other words, citing the FCC rules, Carr was suggesting “The View” could fall under the equal time rule that rather than the “bona fide news” category.
That scrutiny from Carr could spell trouble for ABC considering the Media Research Center counted 102 liberal guests, and not one conservative guest, by the end of July, Fox News reported.
Even though ABC announced Monday it is bringing back Kimmel's show, Carr is accused by some of using his FCC authority get Kimmel’s late-night show dropped after the comedian’s controversial monologue claimed Charlie Kirk’s killer is “MAGA,” meaning a Trump supporter and politically conservative.
Many furious conservatives considered that a slanderous statement intended to mislead Kimmel's audience.
Carr has denied he played a role in Kimmel's punishment, citing Kimmel’s dwindling audience, but it’s also true Carr stated “we can do this the easy way or the hard way” to conservative podcaster Benny Johnson.
“These companies,” Carr told Johnson, “can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Reacting to Carr’s threat against “The View,” Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro told his audience it should be pressure from advertisers and affiliates that get Kimmel and “The View” yanked from the airwaves.
“I do not want the FCC in the business of telling local affiliates that their licenses will be removed if they broadcast material that the FCC deems to be informationally false,” Shapiro said.
Carr’s comment to Johnson was the first suggestion from the FCC chairman that Kimmel was a target. Later that same day, ABC affiliate group Nexstar Media Group announced it was preempting Kimmel’s show. ABC/Disney announced that evening it was suspending the program indefinitely.
Asked for comment about Carr targeting "The View" show, MRC spokesman Tim Graham said he agrees with Shapiro's opposition.
"I'm with Shapiro," Graham told AFN, "that it could set a bad partisan precedent if you yanked licenses over political speech."
If the politics was reversed, Shapiro said, conservatives would be up in arms.
“If this were a Democrat at the FCC,” Shapiro observed, “who is saying, 'I want to thank Nexstar for cancelling all affiliates of Fox’ thanks to something that Sean Hannity said, or that back in the day Tucker Carlson said on the air,' would the Right be okay with that? Or would they be claiming, quite properly, that is massive regulatory overreach, unprecedented in scope?”
Graham, who has been at MRC since 1989, also told AFN the FCC may feel like a "relic" because television has changed so greatly in recent decades. The air waves it oversees, he said, have shrunk dramatically because the networks themselves have a shrinking share of the market.
"But the networks and their affiliates haven't demonstrated an actual care for the 'public interest.' For decades now, the networks have served the Democrat Party interest," Graham said.
