Chairman Carr, Let's Play a Game!

The horror movie SAW (2004) quickly became a worldwide sensation and has since spawned nine sequels with a tenth in speculation. The synopsis is that a serial killer named Jigsaw captures strangers and puts them into situations or contraptions which do not kill them outright but give them a gory choice if they want to escape. For example, in the first movie, a manacled captive had to saw off his own foot to escape (thus the movie’s title). In SAW III (2006), a victim can unlock the spring-trap binding her only by fishing bare-fisted for the trap’s key in a jar of powerful acid, which excruciatingly disintegrates her hand as the price for freedom.

Resort to such gruesome imagery may be distasteful, but it memorably demonstrates that coercion is always ugly, even if it offers a hollow choice to the victim.

Last week such coercive ugliness was on full display in the Federal Communication Commission’s pressure on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) to fire Jimmy Kimmel. For those unaware, on ABC’s show “Jimmy Kimmel Live” broadcast on September 11th, 2025, Kimmel delivered a monologue in which he condemned Charlie Kirk’s murder which had occurred the day before, then engaged in commentary which aspersed President Donald Trump’s reaction to Kirk’s murder (time stamp 00:00 - 01:50). The FCC Chair Brendan Carr, a Republican appointed to the FCC by Trump in 2017, appeared on conservative pundit Benny Johnson’s show on September 18th, 2025, during which interview Carr unsubtly suggested that the FCC could or would revoke ABC’s television license due to Kimmel’s commentary (time stamp 11:40 - 11:57). Carr’s suggestion in turn forced the Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair Media Group, which own many ABC affiliates in different markets throughout the USA, to suspend Kimmel “indefinitely.”

For context, both media groups Nexstar and Sinclair have invested multiple millions of dollars into their nationwide operations, which rely on the FCC’s licenses. Nexstar even has an acquisition valued at $6 billion pending for review by the FCC, and ABC’s parent company of Disney has untold billions sunk into its numerous businesses, many of which rely on the FCC’s licenses. Governmental threat to their broadcast licenses to effectuate a desired course of action is coercion, plain and simple.

Some will say – and some are – that this is not coercion, only inducement. The FCC did not coerce ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel; it merely indicated the wisdom in effectuating it. This is the flimsiest of sophistry. If the adverse consequence which one entity seeks to avoid is that caused or created by another entity, then that other entity is coercing a choice on the first. It is one thing for an oncologist to demand $40,000 from a patient to remove a cancerous lung. It is quite another if Jigsaw straps you into a contraption which hideously scoops out your lung unless you pay him $40,000!

Of course, FCC Chair Brendan Carr couches his intervention as protection of the public interest. As he stated during Benny Johnson’s interview,

“They [broadcasters] have a license granted by us at the FCC and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest… The public interest means you can’t be running a narrow partisan circus and still meeting your public interest obligations.”

That is, Carr is strong-arming the licensees, but it is purely for society’s benefit.

Partisan broadcast journalism is a widely recognized problem which this blog has addressed before. Partisan journalists and their editors have so many ways to misreport a potential story – including outright omission – to ensure that the public never gains a fair and complete grasp on it. Thankfully, the best solution to this problem is… partisan journalism of the other stripe!

Back in 2019, progressivist media blocked all mention of President and candidate Joe Biden’s troubled son Hunter’s laptop, which was discovered to contain all kinds of damaging information on the Bidens. Hence, conservative media sounded the alarm about it. In 2024, conservative media either omitted or downplayed a story about porn star Stormy Daniels’ alleged tryst with Donald Trump years earlier for which he supposedly paid out-of-pocket hush money to her, so progressivist media ran with the story.

It would be refreshing if we had journalism which fairly reports on all the news so that we arrive at our own conclusions. In such journalism’s absence, the best remedy to partisan voices in the media is… more unimpeded partisan voices. The last thing we need is for agency bureaucrats to guess what news is in our interest and what is not.

More to the point in regards to Jimmy Kimmel, he is no journalist. His monologues and jokes may recount facts and make assertions, but no one would ever confuse his entertainment for journalism. He satirizes public figures to entertain his audience, which is the whole point behind the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. Like me, you may think him unfunny and even mean-spirited at times (Kimmel was always gleeful to joke about conservatives getting cancelled), but the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech means squat if it only protects those whose speech we value.

Having determined that the government unduly coerced Kimmel’s suspension, and having debunked government’s flimsy rationalization, we come to the craziest consideration here which is how could President Trump and his conservative ilk ever think Carr’s partisan intrusion on American media is a wise course of action.

Only four years ago, Big Tech and mainstream media colluded to deplatform Donald Trump and his supporters following J/6. Even Fox News for a while dared not feature the former and future president except late at night. Not only were Trump and his allies like Roger Stone deplatformed (in 2020) from social media accounts, but the social media apps themselves were deplatformed when AppleStore and GooglePlay excluded Gab and Parler from their markets. The media blackout was so bad that candidate Trump had to launch his own app, Truth Social, to have a platform for his speech. After having suffered such overt and covert censorship by mainstream media and Big Tech, for conservatives to celebrate Kimmel’s suspension and pine for that of other critics is the epitome of folly.

As of three days ago, ABC reinstated Kimmel on his show, so the present infringement on free speech is averted, but a worrisome precedent for governmental intervention has been established. Maybe a master of 4D underwater upside-down blindfolded handcuffed chess like President Trump can’t see it, but it’s clear as day to any Libertarian. Such precedent will someday force conservatives to saw through their own neck just to free their mind.