Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro made plain his company’s opposition to Brendan Carr’s FCC actions against Jimmy Kimmel: Live! and the agency’s investigations into the broadcast licenses of eight local Disney-owned ABC shows and The View.
“Our position on this is clear,” D’Amaro said in a CNBC interview during its D23 Expo. “We’re very principled on this. We’re going to stand up to what we believe is journalistic integrity. And we’re not going to be told how to run that side of our business. Our filings, I think, speak for that. I like what we do. We tell incredible stories. I think we do it well. We do it around the world. And we’re going to stay committed to that.”
The statement comes after months of limbo regarding the regulator’s early review of eight local ABC shows’ licenses and its investigation into the popular talk show The View. The FCC ordered the reviews in April, just a day after Trump urged ABC to fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the FCC for comment.
FCC Chairman Carr claimed the reviews are a part of a broader investigation into Disney’s DEI policies. He’s also said that ABC’s decision to limit coverage on Trump’s July address will play a role in the review and purported that broadcasters must “rebalance things” politically and “operate in the public interest” in exchange for “subsidized access.”
ABC called the government’s early reviews of its stations unconstitutional and alleged that the regulator is violating the network’s First Amendment rights, saying the regulator’s attempt to punish oppositional political content has had a “chilling effect” on free speech.
The ACLU submitted a Freedom of Information Act request on Tuesday for the FCC to release records pertaining to its decision to require the stations to renew their broadcast licenses early, saying the agency’s public reason “does not seem credible in context” and questioning its “true motivations.”
“The retaliation against ABC is a signal to every media company in the country: accommodate the Administration’s view of what news coverage should look like or pay the price,” ABC wrote in a July filing to the agency.
The 119-page document continued, “Across the government, regulatory and contracting carrots and sticks have been trained on other disfavored speakers,” ABC’s lawyers continued in the filing. “The tools vary; the objective does not: a media industry too fearful of official reprisal to report the news freely.”
