Good going by ABC for suing the Federal Communications Commission and Chair Brendan Carr over his effort to require eight local ABC-owned broadcast stations (including New York, L.A. and Chicago but no Florida affiliates) to submit to license renewals years ahead of schedule, announced just a day after Donald Trump all but ordered Carr to do so as he raged against late night host Jimmy Kimmel. We hope a swift win will put an end to this un-American effort.
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A case like this might ordinarily be extremely difficult to win, but then again ordinarily an FCC chair and the president of the United States would not be openly discussing their animosity towards the First Amendment rights of a large broadcast network and their intention to utilize regulatory tools to rein it in.
Trump himself has repeatedly and publicly pushed Carr to take the exact step of revoking ABC’s broadcast licenses and has never even attempted to put forward a legitimate rationale, instead whining about late night programs and news coverage and not airing his falsehood-riddled primetime address.
Every president since there have been broadcasters has had reason to be irked by them, both radio and television. LBJ and Nixon were unhappy as the images from the increasingly chaotic Vietnam War turned domestic political opinion. More recently, talk radio played a significant role in the conspiracy theories around Obama and arguably helped drive some of the contemporary conservative sphere’s rejection of the truth and embrace of authoritarianism.
Yet none of these presidents moved to actually restrict these outlets from broadcasting their reporting, commentary, comedy and so on because they knew that this was contrary not only to our national values, but also the Constitution.
Now, as some have noted, there are Supreme Court precedents that have already held that broadcasters don’t have complete free speech rights around things like, for example, obscenity. Agree or disagree with that rationale, it exists. That is, however, a far cry from an administration essentially wanting to control the output of a broadcaster using the stick of regulatory action.
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In the former case, the government has set out some specific parameters that the broadcasters cannot overstep, which are understood by all and are not ultimately about any political slant of the speech. In the latter case, the government is ex post facto trying to punish a major broadcaster for its editorial decisions in a clear effort to chill political speech not just from them, but from everyone with a broadcast license.
It’s worth noting that this lawsuit only comes after Carr and the administration forced ABC’s hand. Over and over, they’ve pressed the company to play ball, and already strong-armed it into briefly taking Kimmel’s show off the air last year.
This should come as a lesson to all other broadcasters and indeed to other journalists, local and state governments, universities, civil society organizations and everyone else who has or could draw the ire of Trump (which is really anyone who could feasibly stand up to him): attempts at compliance will work temporarily at best.
What Trump learned over a lifetime of business failures is that he should just keep swinging, and the only way he stops is if you swing back. This lawsuit is a step in the right direction.
This editorial originally appeared in the New York Daily News. The Sentinel sometimes republishes editorials that reflect our overall point of view. The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Executive Editor Roger Simmons, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at [email protected].
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