Scribble

David Rind

00:00:00

This is One Thing, I'm David Rind, and the man who used to chair the Federal Communications Commission says the person doing it now is a hypocrite.

Tom Wheeler

00:00:09

Just a couple of years ago, he said censorship is the authoritarian's dream. Stick around.

Nats

00:00:23

This next comic a good buddy of mine, he’s been on the TonightShow. Make some noise for LeClerc Andre, everybody!

David Rind

00:00:30

On Thursday night, our producer Paola made her way down to the Comedy Cellar in New York City to meet up with the comedian LeKirk Andre.

LeClerc Andre

00:00:37

My buddy, man, he can't find a girl. He's like, man I think these girls are scared of me. I'm like, you're holding a gun.

David Rind

00:00:45

'It had been just over 24 hours since ABC and its parent company Disney made the stunning decision to suspend late-night host Jimmy Kimmel indefinitely following a pressure campaign from the Trump-appointed FCC chairman Brendan Carr. The whole drama centers around comments Kimmel made on Monday about how some on the right were responding to the murder of the conservative activist Charlie Kerr.

Jimmy Kimmel

00:01:08

New lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.

LeClerc Andre

00:01:20

For him to lose his show over a joke that benign is wild to me.

David Rind

00:01:25

'Andre has been doing stand-up for nearly a decade. He says the move to shelve Kimmel smells an awful lot like censorship, and in just the last week, he's noticed a bit of a vibe shift in the audiences he performs for.

LeClerc Andre

00:01:40

I might not talk about Trump, per se, by name, or I might not talk these other political figures, but I talk about gun rights, I talk school shootings, I talked about immigration. And I'm seeing that material land differently because audiences are now a bit sensitive to those talking points all of a sudden. At one point, they weren't afraid to laugh at these issues, but now there's a fear that it might be an your spin. Or a condemnation if they do laugh or don't laugh at these jokes.

Paola

00:02:16

Basically you're saying is that you have changed your routine, you changed the things that you're doing, you haven't?

LeClerc Andre

00:02:22

No, I refuse to change my routine. I make adjustments, but it's times like this where you have to really be brave and stand in your truth. I can't conform to an audience. I'm saying it because I think it's funny and because I think it is true. And if you disagree with it, then be quiet. Especially now when we're facing opposition the way we're facing it, for us to cower and make ourselves small is only going to lead to losing more, losing our voice that much more, right? And if that happens, then we lose, then America loses, then freedom of speech is gone completely. So I can't, we can't cower in moments like this. We have to stand strong, we have to stand ten toes down and really push back.

David Rind

00:03:06

Remember, it was just two months ago that CBS announced Stephen Colbert's show would be ending. But the network said that was for financial reasons and they're letting Colbert finish out the season. ABC and Disney pulled the plug on Kimmel just hours after the FCC chairman encouraged affiliates to preempt the show. Outraged celebrities and democratic politicians say, this is what they mean when they accuse President Donald Trump of being an authoritarian. Even Republican Senator Ted Cruz seemed to realize That's what a big move this is. On his podcast Friday, he said he was happy Kimmel is off the air, but compared the FCC chair to a mafia boss and warned the threats could have unintended consequences.

Ted Cruz

00:03:47

If the government gets in the business of saying, we don't like what you, the media, have said. We're going to ban you from the airwaves if you don't say what we like. That will end up bad for conservatives. It reminds me.

David Rind

00:04:03

And this goes well beyond late night TV. By some estimates, the FCC has a direct regulatory impact on about one sixth of the US economy. Nearly every American uses some kind of communication network subject to its regulation. So, what is the state of free speech in this country? And what will the FCC do next? I decided to call up someone who used to run the regulatory authority.

Tom Wheeler

00:04:28

My name is Tom Wheeler and I was the chairman of the FCC from 2013 to 2017.

David Rind

00:04:37

So, Chairman Wheeler, for those who don't follow this stuff super closely, can you just explain what the FCC actually does as it relates to what shows up on my TV?

Tom Wheeler

00:04:47

Sure, the FCC regulates all of the nation's networks, whether it be telephone networks or broadband internet or broadcasters. And the FCC grants the licenses that your local broadcaster uses to get access to the airwaves to reach your home. And the FCC has responsibility then for overseeing. Those activities within the scope of the First Amendment and other protections.

David Rind

00:05:25

What do you make of how the trumpet pointed chairperson, Brendan Carr has run the FCC since taking over and more specifically, what do you make of his threats against the ABC leading up to this suspension of Jimmy Kimmel the other night?

Tom Wheeler

00:05:39

Well, it's not a surprise because what we have seen during the Trump administration is the FCC constantly engaging in what you might call overreach. They launched an investigation into the PBS and NPR programming. They launched the investigation into a radio station in San Francisco and their coverage of an ICE raid. The chairman wrote... The CEOs of Apple and Metta and Microsoft and Google. And he directly said to them that you have participated in a censorship cartel that must be completely dismantled. He would not approve the merger of Paramount and Skydance because CBS was part of Paramont and because Donald Trump was suing CBS. And made it clear that until CBS settled with Donald Trump, they weren't gonna get their merger. So he has been quite active in intimidation of those that he is responsible for overseeing.

David Rind

00:06:48

'I mean, how common is it for the FCC to be looking into the content specifically in the way that you have described? Like, did that happen a lot when you were in charge? It's a great-

Tom Wheeler

00:07:00

because let me just let me read something to you this is there is a policy manual at the FCC right this is this is how you're to operate and it says this it says quote the First Amendment as well as section 326 of the Communications Act prohibits the commission from censoring broadcast material and from interfering with the freedom of expression in broadcasting Now that is pretty explicit, saying you've got to be hands off of content.

David Rind

00:07:35

I imagine the FCC does get a lot of complaints from the public.

Tom Wheeler

00:07:39

You get a lot of complaints, you know, think about the wardrobe malfunction at the Superbowl. Janet Jackson, yeah. Janet Jackson.

David Rind

00:07:49

And you have to deal with those. Right, but that kind of stuff is obscenity based. What Carr was saying is that Kimmel's comments basically amounted to news distortion, which I think a lot of comedians are like, it was just a joke, maybe not the best worded joke, but a joke. And what Carr was doing leading up to this was encouraging local stations to preempt Kimmel. Is that kind thing normal?

Tom Wheeler

00:08:12

The interesting thing is... The stations had said, no, we're going to stand for the First Amendment, and the FCC had tried to take away their licenses. They could have gone to court, and I am certain that the court would have found for the first amendment and Section 326 that says you can't do this kind of thing.

Brendan Carr

00:08:36

I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there's gonna be additional work for the FCC.

Tom Wheeler

00:08:49

'But Brendan Carr has patented a way of coercive intimidation in which he doesn't get to a decision that is appealable to the court, but he just intimidates and says, hey, look, you got to do business with me. And if you think that I'm going to favor your upcoming merger, you've got another thing coming because-

David Rind

00:09:15

Nice license you got there. Shame if some were to happen to it. Exactly. Great way of putting it, David. Yes.

Brendan Carr

00:09:22

I think, again, Disney needs to see some change here, but the individual licensed stations that are taking their content, it's time for them to step up and say, this garbage, to the extent that that's what comes down the pipe in the future, isn't something that we think serves the needs of our local communities. But this sort of status quo is obviously not acceptable where we are.

David Rind

00:09:42

Well, there is a bit of financial backstory that I do kind of want to outline for the listeners in this story specifically. You have a situation where Nextar, which is a local broadcaster, it owns about two dozen ABC affiliates, is trying to acquire another station conglomerate called Tegna. That would need FCC sign off. They had objected to what Kimmel said and almost immediately Disney pulled the plug temporarily. Then another company, Sinclair, which is also bidding for Tegna, said... You know, it wants Disney to go further than this indefinite suspension. And we should say these companies are basically aligned politically with Trump in the kind of content they run. Do you think these local broadcasters hold too much power over the national networks?

Tom Wheeler

00:10:26

'The marketplace in broadcasting has been evolving and the local broadcasters, let's go back to the fact that the federal government through the FCC awarded these licenses to use the people's air waves to deliver content in the public interest. And the broadcaster's are now coming back to FCC and saying, oh, we're not making enough money. With all of these new challenges from streaming and everything, and you have to let us have more concentrated market control so that instead of having what the statute requires in terms of a diversity of voices in every television market, you can end up owning two or three of those stations and putting out the same information on all of them, the same editorial content, the same kind of coverage. And that is the issue that is at the heart of this deal that you cited, the Nextar-Tegna acquisition, because that acquisition today is a violation of the FCC's rules because of the consolidation of power that it creates. Brendan Carr has indicated he wants to change those rules and allow those companies to merge and to have this incredible reach. Across the country. And at this point in time, I think it's fair to say that the broadcasters are beholden. If you want to get your merger approved, if you want to get the rules changed, you'd better take the hints that I'm delivering.

David Rind

00:12:11

We'll be right back. Well, I mean, you said basically though, that the legal might would be behind anybody trying to challenge something like this, right? Because so far they haven't actually yanked any licenses. It's all been threats. So wouldn't it just take one company to say, call their bluff and see if they actually do it?

Tom Wheeler

00:12:41

This is a business, right? So this is the problem. These are companies that are beholden to their shareholders to produce returns, and the person who controls their regulatory future can have a significant impact on that, and they want to be beholden. You know, there's an old line that threatening broadcasters is like shaking a stick at a frog. You can get them to jump in any direction you want.

David Rind

00:13:10

But I guess it would be painful, though, right, for a company like Disney if consumers were to actually revolt. Like, I've heard some folks calling for a boycott of Disney Plus subscriptions until Kimmel is back on the air. I've seen some creatives say, you know, I'm not gonna do any projects for Disney until this situation is resolved. How big would that have to get for the company to actually kind of change its course?

Tom Wheeler

00:13:37

Great question, David. I don't know, but I do know that at the beginning of the Trump administration, they paid Donald Trump $16 million on a lawsuit against George Stephanopoulos, and so they have not been afraid to buckle.

David Rind

00:13:55

Can you game out for me, if Carr was to actually pull the license of a broadcaster, what would that look like and how would that process actually work?

Tom Wheeler

00:14:05

He would take a vote of the commission, and there's a Republican majority on the commission at two to one majority. So one would presume that that would happen. And the day after that vote was taken, I would presume that somebody would be in court challenging it as a violation of the First Amendment and the FCC statute.

David Rind

00:14:25

So it's not like the channel would just flip off.

Tom Wheeler

00:14:29

The first issue in the court would be to grant a stay so that it could stay on the air

David Rind

00:14:33

When was the last time it ever happened? Has it?

Tom Wheeler

00:14:37

Was yanked. Back in the 60s, in the middle of the civil rights era, there was a broadcaster in Mississippi who was blatantly racist and lost his license for actions taken with regard to the local black community.

David Rind

00:14:59

So, obviously the FCC does not control what appears on social media feeds or just out in public, but we've seen a lot of people say this is all part of a larger chilling of free speech that it amounts to state censorship and that people will be more afraid to say provocative political things in the public arena. Do you buy that? Well, let me quote.

Tom Wheeler

00:15:20

And Brendan Carr on that, okay? Where just a couple of years ago, he said, censorship is the authoritarian's dream. For that exact reason, David, because what we're seeing right now, this is the same administration that worried about a cancel culture, and now we're seen cancel culture 2.0, where they are leveraging the power of the FCC to affect public hears by influencing what the media say. And that's the process that we're watching play out. We saw it play out in CBS. We're seeing it playout here with ABC. And I think the president recently tweeted that he expected the late night hosts at NBC to have a similar comeuppance.

David Rind

00:16:18

Yeah, experts have kind of likened some of these media consolidation moves and pressure tactics to what we've seen from strongman regimes, like in Hungary with Viktor Orban. Do you think what the Trump FCC is doing is that serious and calculated, or is this just kind of a way for the administration to antagonize the left? You know, Henry David.

Tom Wheeler

00:16:40

Throw had a great observation years ago, we said, you know, circumstantial evidence can be quite convincing, like when you find a trout on the fence. And so I think that there's an awful lot of evidence here that suggests that there are two kinds of speech in this country. There's the kind that is favorable to the Trump administration. And there is that which is not. And the FCC is in the middle of that. Let's look, for instance, at when Brendan Carr approved the transfer of the licenses for CBS after CBS had settled this specious lawsuit with Donald Trump. He required as a term of that license transfer that they appoint, CBS appoint an ombudsman to make sure that they were fair. In terms of their coverage at CBS News. And we all know what the definition of fair is, what was the root of the lawsuit. And so I think that we're seeing a situation where indeed this administration has standards of expectations to toe the line for those in the public media.

David Rind

00:17:58

I did want to get you to take on one more thing. Last week, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade went on air and proposed killing mentally ill homeless people by involuntary leaf flow injection. He said, just kill them. And I'm not making any of that up. He endorsed killing homeless people on live TV. Now he has since apologized. He called the remarks callous. Is that something the FCC could have raised a complaint about with Fox?

Tom Wheeler

00:18:26

Could and did are two different things, you know The answer is they didn't it was crickets

David Rind

00:18:35

But in a world where there are different people in charge, would you have expected to see something from that?

Tom Wheeler

00:18:43

So the pattern has traditionally been, yes, I overstepped. Yes, I made a mistake. And are you remorseful about that? What I would have done in that situation, if I were chairman, again, I go back to the fact that, what was Voltaire's line? He said, I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to have that belief. We want a broadcasting system. We should have a broadcasting systems. That has a diversity of voices challenging each other, even when some of those voices are disagreeable voices. And I'm not sure that that's the goal of the trumpet.

David Rind

00:19:27

Well, Commissioner Wheeler, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you, David.

President Donald Trump

00:19:33

All they do is interrupt. They're licensed. They're not allowed to do that.

David Rind

00:19:39

'In the days after Kimmel's suspension, President Trump has continued to lash out against late-night hosts and networks that criticize him.

President Donald Trump

00:19:46

They give me only bad publicity for a press. I mean, they're getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away. It will be up to Brendan Carr. I think Brendan Carr is a good guy.

David Rind

00:19:58

Meanwhile, FCC chair Brendan Carr has suggested that other shows like The View should be more heavily scrutinized, and he told Fox News there will be more shoes to drop.

Brendan Carr

00:20:08

This is a massive shift that's taking place in the media ecosystem. I think the consequences are going to continue to flow.

David Rind

00:20:14

As of Friday afternoon, ABC has not commented on the future of Kimmel's show, but my colleague Elizabeth Wagmeister reported that, according to a source, Disney is hopeful there is a path to bring it back. That's all for us today. We will be back on Wednesday, and I'll talk to you then.

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