2025-09-19
21 分钟The FCC has historically acted as a kind of enforcer of community standards.
They've doled out fines for saying the F word, for example, or wardrobe malfunctions.
Factual mistakes, errors in judgment, bad jokes, that has not traditionally been part of their job.
Until this week.
As you may have already heard,
comedian Jimmy Kimmel's late night show was suspended by ABC for comments he made on the show about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Here's the timing of events, which is important.
Kimmel says something inaccurate about the guy who killed Charlie Kirk.
Shortly after, the chairman of the FCC, Brendan Carr,
gets on a right-wing podcast and suggests that ABC and its affiliates take steps against Kimmel,
saying, quote, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.
The network, which relies on stations carrying their programming, wasted little time.
That same day, they pulled Kimmel's show off the air indefinitely.
Here's what Trump said when a reporter asked him about it on Air Force One.
Maybe their license should be taken away.
It'll be up to Brendan Carr.
I'm Hannah Rosen.
This is Radio Atlantic.
On Thursday,
Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg sat down with exactly the person you want to hear from about what it means that the government is weighing in on whether comedians who do political comedy can make a slightly wrong mediocre joke.