Media Bias

[Brian Peacock]

Kimmel show suspended indefinitely after the Trump-appointed chair of the US broadcast regulator threatened broadcasters’ licenses if action was not taken against the late-night host...

...During his opening monologue for Tuesday night’s show, Kimmel said: “Many in Maga-land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk.” He accused the US vice-president, JD Vance, of blaming the left for Kirk’s death without evidence.

“While our side of the aisle certainly has its crazies, it is a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far left,” Vance said while hosting an episode of Kirk’s podcast from the White House.

“And by ‘statistical fact’, he means ‘complete bullshit’,” Kimmel said to applause, citing a study that found far-right groups were the greatest source of domestic terrorism and extremist violence in the US. The Department of Justice has removed the study from its website.

“Here’s a question JD Vance might be able to answer: who wanted to hang the guy who was vice president before you? Was that the liberal left? Or the toothless army who stormed the Capitol on January 6?” he said.

Andrew Alford, the president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, called Kimmel’s comments “offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse”.

“Continuing to give Mr Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue,” Alford said.

Kimmel is yet to issue any statement on the matter....

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radi ... k-comments

Kimmel's remarks are a tad disrespectful but at least he's not claiming that black people don't have the brain power of white people or equating the supportive parents of trans children with child sex abusers - as Kirk did.

I guess Kirk is America's first protestant saint now.

[L'Emmerdeur]

To honor that supposed champion of free speech MAGA is muzzling its critics. Naturally.

[Brian Peacock]

Yeah, the FreeSpeechers are not really concerned with people being protected from persecution by the state or the political agents they criticise - that's a very small-L liberal principle; not their natural wheelhouse. Free Speech is the Trojan horse for simply obliging the public to be exposed to and take into account ideas they have &/or would otherwise dismiss, ridicule, or ignore. Free Speech in that context is merely a sop for deliberate attempts to mainstream extremely right-wing political views.

I guess when the combined weight of a govt, govt friendly media and corporations, and the personage of The Grand Negus himself, are brought to bear on deciding and enforcing what can and cannot be said in public, then free speech isn't just threatened, it's already given way to authoritarianism.

[Brian Peacock]

Concerning Brendan Carr...


Ted Cruz: “He threatens explicitly: ‘We’re going to cancel ABC’s license. We’re going to take him off the air so ABC cannot broadcast any more’ … He says: ‘We can do this the easy way, but we can do this the hard way.’ And I got to say, that’s right out of Goodfellas. That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘Nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it. I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said. I am thrilled that he was fired. But let me tell you: if the government gets in the business of saying, ‘We don’t like what you, the media, have said. We’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like,’ that will end up bad for conservatives.”

Trump: “When you have networks that give somebody 97% bad publicity, I think that’s dishonesty. I think is a patriot. I think Brendan Carr is a courageous person. I think Brendan Carr doesn’t like to see the airwaves be used illegally and incorrectly. So I disagree with Ted Cruz on that.”