Disney is fighting back against the Trump administration — and FCC Chair Brendan Carr in particular — and at least one federal regulator is cheering it on.
The Walt Disney Co. and ABC sued the Federal Communications Commission Tuesday, seeking to block an “unusual early license renewal process” the companies call a “free-speech attack.” It’s one of the most aggressive legal challenges a media corporation has mounted against the Trump administration, reports NBC News.
“In late April, the FCC ordered Disney’s eight owned-and-operated television stations to file their broadcast license renewals ahead of schedule. The directive came amid a probe into ABC’s ‘The View’ program, as well as a long-running investigation into diversity, equity and inclusion practices at Disney,” the report notes before adding, “All eight of Disney’s owned ABC stations are part of Tuesday’s lawsuit.”
The FCC’s move followed Trump’s public campaign against ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over a joke about First Lady Melania Trump. ABC’s lawsuit cites Trump’s own social media posts and accuses the Trump administration of waging “a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts.”
Defending the government bullying, Carr stated at a Senate hearing, “We have a public interest standard that Congress has put into the law, and there’s a number of very specific rules and doctrines that flow from that, the broadcast hoax rule, the news distortion rule.”
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the agency’s lone Democrat, welcomed the suit.
“I have long called on companies to push back against this kind of government intimidation, and I’m glad Disney has shown courage and stepped up,” Gomez said, according to reporter Scott MacFarlane. Gomez separately described the FCC’s actions against Disney and ABC as “a sustained, coordinated campaign of censorship and control, carried out through the weaponization of the FCC.”
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