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Media and tech platforms are feeling the pressure from the

Trump

administration

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ABC's suspension of Jimmy Kimmel is sending shockwaves

through

media

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The FCC wields power over broadcast licenses and media

mergers

By Dawn Chmielewski, Helen Coster and Aditya Soni

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, Sept 20 (Reuters) - ABC's

abrupt suspension of talk show host Jimmy Kimmel under pressure

from the Federal Communications Commission is the latest

demonstration of the power President Donald Trump wields to bend

media, entertainment and digital platforms to his will, as he

uses political pressure to mute criticism and punish

institutions he sees as biased against him.

The move, which came after Kimmel's remarks about the

accused killer of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, has

jolted the U.S. media and entertainment industries and

intensified free-speech fears as the Trump-appointed FCC chair

Brendan Carr threatened to revoke broadcast licenses from

stations that carry what he called "garbage."

Major media and tech companies are now controlled by Trump

supporters or billionaire business leaders who lined up behind

Trump during his inauguration, donated to his inaugural fund, or

visited the White House bearing gifts. Billionaire GOP donor

Larry Ellison's Oracle is part of a consortium of investors with

the inside track to take control of the U.S. operations of the

video-sharing platform TikTok.

This week, the Trump administration announced it had agreed

to a framework for a deal with China that would allow the sale

of TikTok's U.S. assets to continue to operate in the U.S.

Companies such as CBS, Meta Platforms ( META ), and the

editorial pages of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times

have made editorial or operational changes following Trump's

re-election in ways that lay the groundwork for less adversarial

coverage of the president.

"There is a continued lurch to the right throughout much of

our major media in the United States right now," said Victor

Pickard, professor of media policy and political economy at the

Annenberg School of Communication at University of Pennsylvania.

"I expect to see more of this to come. There's no countervailing

force against it."

The decision Wednesday night is the second time since Trump's

re-election that ABC parent company Walt Disney ( DIS ) has

taken action in response to on-air comments. In December, ABC

News agreed to give $15 million to Trump's presidential library

to settle a lawsuit Trump had filed over remarks that anchor

George Stephanopoulos made involving sex abuse claims brought

against Trump by writer E. Jean Carroll.

"They're all terrified," said Steve Kroft, who was a

longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent, specifically citing the

nightly broadcast news. "The thing that scares me the most about

this administration is this retaliatory mindset, to go after its

enemies. And I think they're clearly going after the news

people. That's the top of their list."

Disney ( DIS ) declined to comment.

"Jimmy Kimmel is free to make whatever bad jokes he wants,

but a private company is under no obligation to lose money

producing an unpopular show," said White House spokeswoman

Abigail Jackson. "Jimmy Kimmel's terrible product isn't a free

speech problem; it's a talent problem."

CAMPAIGN AGAINST PERCEIVED BIAS

Pressure on traditional media comes after conservatives

successfully pushed digital platforms to pare back content

moderation which they portrayed as biased.

Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, which had banned Trump for

"incitement of violence" after the January 6, 2021 riot at the

U.S. Capitol, pand promised to restore "free speech" to the

platform. Renamed X, Musk eliminated its Trust and Safety team

in favor of a system that allows its users to fact-check posts,

and restored accounts of conservatives who previously had

violated Twitter's policies.

Content on the platform has become more right-leaning since

the acquisition, according to research from Queensland

University.

Meta Platforms ( META ) disbanded its third-party fact-checking program

in the United States, changes that affected Facebook, Instagram

and Threads.

The company elected Dana White, a Trump ally and the chief

executive of Ultimate Fighting Championship, to its board, and

elevated prominent Republican policy executive Joel Kaplan as

global affairs head.

"We've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and

too much censorship. It's time to get back to our roots around

free expression," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in January.

FCC POWER OVER MEDIA MERGERS

Beyond broadcast licenses, media mergers involving local

broadcasters require the FCC's blessing. The son of longtime

Trump supporter Larry Ellison, David Ellison, helped secure

regulatory approval for his company Skydance Media to buy

Paramount, with the promise that the CBS network would

reflect the "varied ideological perspectives" of American

viewers.

Prior to the deal, Paramount paid $16 million to settle a 2024

lawsuit Trump filed over a "60 Minutes" interview with former

Vice President Kamala Harris, which he claimed gave a distorted

view of his rival for the White House.

The FCC has said the settlement and regulatory review were

unrelated.

Last week, the company announced the appointment of its new

ombudsman, Kenneth R. Weinstein, a former president and CEO of

the conservative Hudson Institute.

Paramount is reported to be in talks to acquire The Free

Press and bring founder Bari Weiss into a leadership role at CBS

News. The former New York Times opinion writer built a national

following by challenging what she views as the illiberal left

and "wokism."

Now Paramount is preparing a bid to acquire Warner Bros

Discovery ( WBD ), home to CNN, while Larry Ellison's cloud giant

Oracle is in play to buy TikTok, which would put a key

communication tool that reaches 170 million Americans in the

hands of a conservative billionaire.

When asked about allegations of a right-leaning shift at

CBS, a spokeswoman for parent-company Paramount directed Reuters

to CEO David Ellison's previous comments about the network's

political neutrality. "We're an entertainment company first,"

Ellison has said. "Everyone - left, right, young, old - is its

audience. I'm not going to be in the position of making

political statements about anything."

'THE EASY WAY OR THE HARD WAY'

Disney ( DIS ) was attempting to find a way to defuse the social media

backlash against Kimmel's comments when the FCC's Carr turned up

the heat.

The regulator said Kimmel misled viewers about the alleged

shooter's affiliation with Trump's Make America Great Again

movement, and urged local stations to push back, raising the

possibility of the FCC revoking the broadcast licenses of local

television stations that did not comply.

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way," Carr said in

an interview with conservative podcaster Benny Johnson on

Wednesday.

ABC pulled Kimmel off the air after Nexstar Media

Group ( NXST ), the largest owner of broadcast stations in the

U.S., decided to preempt the show in the wake of his comments

about Kirk. Sinclair, the nation's largest owner of

ABC-affiliated TV stations, followed suit.

Several ABC affiliates ran a Charlie Kirk special on Friday

in Kimmel's regular time slot.

Nexstar will need the FCC's approval to complete its announced

$6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna, the owner of 64 television

stations and exceed the agency's regulatory cap on station

ownership.

"The decision to preempt 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' was made

unilaterally by the senior executive team at Nexstar," said Gary

Weitman, the company's chief communications officer. "And they

had no communication with the FCC or any government agency prior

to making that decision."

LAWFARE AGAINST THE PRESS

Trump has used the courts to attack major media outlets over

unflattering coverage. He has filed nine media-related civil

suits since 2020, including a $15 billion defamation lawsuit

against the New York Times and book publisher Penguin Random

House filed this week, and a $10 billion lawsuit against the

Wall Street Journal in July.

The Journal has said the lawsuit is meritless. The Times

said Trump's lawsuit has no legitimate legal claims and is an

attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting.

A federal judge on Friday struck the Times lawsuit over its

content, saying that a complaint is not "a public forum for

vituperation and invective" or "a protected platform to rage

against an adversary" and gave Trump 28 days to file an amended

complaint.

First Amendment scholars see the moves, taken together, as a

broad attempt to suppress free speech in America. "The Trump

administration is becoming increasingly brazen in its abuse of

government power to silence its critics," said Jameel Jaffer,

executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at

Columbia University, in a statement.

Even as some conservatives have targeted Kirk critics,

others have also expressed concern about the use of government

power to suppress speech.

"During the Biden administration, conservatives rightly

complained when the government went after their speech," said

David Inserra, a fellow for free expression and technology at

the Cato Institute. "But now the Trump administration is using

many of the same arguments to justify censorship."

(Dawn Chmielewski reporting from Los Angeles, Helen Coster

reporting from New York, Aditya Soni reporting from San

Francisco; editing by Kenneth Li in San Francisco and Michael

Learmonth in New York;)