When ABC briefly pulled late night show host Jimmy Kimmel off the air last month, the swirl of political coverage focused primarily on the First Amendment implications. Was the Trump White House pressuring broadcasters reliant on government licenses to silence a comedian and television host who relishes criticizing the president? Was an administration with an authoritarian streak making a move toward state-controlled media? The answers to these questions are undoubtedly yes.
But take a deeper look at the fact pattern, and it becomes clear that the Kimmel episode has as much to do with free speech as it does with using antitrust enforcement and regulation to advance the Trump administration’s political goals. This time, the end game is not the eradication of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, which the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) required as a condition for approving the Paramount-Skydance merger. It is also not about taking aim at political viewpoint, which the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) did in extracting a promise from marketing, advertising, and communications companies Omnicom and Interpublic Group (IPG) to refrain from tying advertising spending to (read “conservative”) ideology and viewpoint.
Rather, the Kimmel incident signals the pursuit of another political goal by the Trump administration: promoting state censorship. This time, both the political goal and method of interference are different. Indeed, the Kimmel incident is not about imposing conditions on mergers that have nothing to do with a credible antitrust violation. Rather, it is about the administration capitalizing on, or encouraging, companies to curry favor with the White House to get their mergers approved. In the case of Kimmel, the supplicant was the largest television station owner in the U.S., Nexstar, which is currently pursuing its own merger.
