{"id":28948,"date":"2025-09-21T09:11:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T09:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/28948\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T09:11:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T09:11:06","slug":"no-matter-which-side-government-threats-to-free-speech-are-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/28948\/","title":{"rendered":"No matter which side, government threats to free speech are wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"play\"<\/p>\n

Jimmy Kimmel’s Charlie Kirk remarks that led to ABC suspension<\/p>\n

Jimmy Kimmel’s comments on the Charlie Kirk shooting sparked backlash and led Walt Disney’s ABC to suspend his show indefinitely.<\/p>\n

When we were kids, we used to talk about life in \u201cscary\u201d places like Russia. \u201cYou can\u2019t even say anything critical there,\u201d we\u2019d exclaim, \u201cor the government will throw you in jail!\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It seemed like such a frightening, faraway idea, a country where merely speaking could bring on government persecution.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Years later, in 1986, I went to Russia on assignment and witnessed this life firsthand. I had a translator who warned me not to speak English to her when we were in public. On a train, she rolled her eyes in the direction of a man, and later whispered to me, \u201cKGB.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

More: Mitch Albom: The bell that tolls for Charlie Kirk’s death rings loudest with our youths<\/a><\/p>\n

I also traveled extensively in East Germany, then part of the Communist bloc, where people refused to engage in conversation about politics for fear of reprisal \u2014 even though we were in restaurants or sporting venues.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCome on,\u201d I would say, \u201cthere\u2019s nobody listening.\u201d But they stayed silent.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what fear of government does. It chills expression. It freezes thought.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jimmy Kimmel fallout<\/p>\n

We are coming off a week where even some conservatives were stunned at the sudden suspension of ABC\u2019s long-running \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live!\u201d <\/a>show after the host made disparaging remarks about President Donald Trump and his supporters in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk\u2019s murder<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c\u201cWe hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang,\u201d Kimmel said. He went on to suggest that Trump supporters were \u201cworking very hard to capitalize on the murder.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a callous, insensitive and unfunny comment \u2014 it was also inaccurate \u2014 in other words, like a lot of things you hear on the airwaves and the internet these days.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But remember, cable TV and social media are not governed by the Federal Communications Commission.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Network TV \u2014 like ABC \u2014 is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So once Kimmel doubled down the following night \u2014 and reportedly planned to defend his position again on the next show \u2014 the Disney company, which owns ABC, got nervous.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then, when FCC chairman Brendan Carr suggested the government might take action if Disney didn\u2019t, \u201cnervousness\u201d jumped to a whole new level.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,\u201d Carr said on a podcast Wednesday. \u201cThese companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

The easy way or the hard way? All that was missing was the baseball bat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Disney got the hint. So did Sinclair and Nextar, the two biggest TV station owners in the nation. Both of them are considering huge acquisitions that would require FCC approval. They promptly announced they would be preempting Kimmel\u2019s show for the foreseeable future.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then Disney suspended the show indefinitely.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kimmel, who had been on the air for 23 years, was gone in less than 24 hours.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You may cheer that. You may boo that.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Either way, it should worry you.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nobody wins this battle\u00a0<\/p>\n

Remember, what goes around comes around. Liberals can\u2019t be shocked by the Kimmel deal. It wasn\u2019t long ago that Democrats under the Biden administration were encouraging social media to shut down critics of their policies. People lost their platforms if they said the wrong thing about COVID-19 vaccines. People were fired for comments regarding George Floyd that were no more insulting than things being said about Charlie Kirk today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One NBA announcer was fired from a radio job he\u2019d held for 32 years for tweeting a message of \u201cAll Lives Matter …\u201d<\/p>\n

Conservatives back then were loudly critical of this behavior. As recently as last February, Vice President JD Vance was saying such cancel culture days were gone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOur own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth,\u201d Vance said at the Munich Security conference. \u201c\u2026 the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Instead, it\u2019s taking it further. Carr\u2019s comments clearly had an effect on Disney\u2019s decision, whether they want to say so or not. And we\u2019ve already seen what approval for a multibillion merger might do to a corporation\u2019s behavior (witness suspicions over Paramount\u2019s merger with Skydance and the decision to dismiss Stephen Colbert).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Look, folks, this is bad on the left and bad on the right. We are all smart enough to ignore dumb comments on TV. We all have remote controls. We shouldn\u2019t have to worry about lightning bolts coming from the government sky if someone criticizes it. Kimmel\u2019s comments were awful and misplaced. But considering you hear far worse on cable TV with no repercussions, erasing someone like him almost seems pointless.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not harmless. Those happy with Kimmel\u2019s suspension hoist the argument that it was strictly a business decision. But it was a business decision made under a subtle threat of retaliation (\u201cThe easy way or the hard way\u201d) and a general \u201cYou better watch it\u201d atmosphere of a government.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

And when the government starts threatening the speech of the people, you know what it looks like? It looks like those countries we used to whisper about as kids. And we were right. It is scary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Contact Mitch Albom:\u00a0malbom@freepress.com<\/a>. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at\u00a0MitchAlbom.com. Follow him\u00a0@mitchalbom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jimmy Kimmel’s Charlie Kirk remarks that led to ABC suspension Jimmy Kimmel’s comments on the Charlie Kirk shooting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[565,25108,437,8640,25111,1259,1128,25113,1130,11851,11863,4550,146,85,46,25109,11487,25110,7416,564,753,25107,25112,790,43,420,801,11852,238,6673,1593,1943,38,411,6678,424,11484,21177,21178],"class_list":["post-28948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-affiliate","tag-albom","tag-arts","tag-biden","tag-communism","tag-company","tag-coronavirus","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-covid-19","tag-democratic","tag-democratic-party","tag-disney","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-jd","tag-jd-vance","tag-joe","tag-joe-biden","tag-local","tag-local-affiliate-arts-u0026-entertainment","tag-mitch","tag-mitch-albom","tag-negative","tag-news","tag-overall","tag-overall-negative","tag-party","tag-politics","tag-programs","tag-russia","tag-shows","tag-top-stories","tag-tv","tag-tv-shows-u0026-programs","tag-u0026","tag-vance","tag-walt","tag-walt-disney-company"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}