President says broadcasters should lose licenses for criticizing him

What happened to the party of Free Speech absolutism?

Edit: for those claiming this isn't a free speech issue the President is using the FCC to go after people he doesn't like. He must be a special snowflake.

It's the party of bad faith.

every accusation is an admission

Their speech was never in jeopardy, they just didn’t like its consequences. And now that they have the upper hand they will try to actively impose the same restrictions which they accused others of placing on them.

Victimhood distorts reality and leads to outsized reprisals.

In fairness, conservatives never said they supported free speech.

They said they wanted more promotion of conservative viewpoints.

Kind of a subtle, but important distinction there.

Neither liberals, nor conservatives support free speech.

Free speech is for them not for you or me. Always has been.

This isn’t true. They couldn’t stop talking about free speech and how their hate speech should be allowed and if you didn’t like it you’re just a snowflake.

Double standard is the standard for those kinds of toxic people and their sycophants

> Their speech was never in jeopardy, they just didn’t like its consequences.

Can't you say the same about the Jimmy Kimmel situation? He's not in jail, he's free to speak, his employer just didn't want to back him up on it.

All of the arguments used to excuse cancel culture ("right to speech not to a platform", "it's a company censoring you, not the government", "freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences") are now being leveraged by the right. Why did anyone think it would go any other way? Was the assumption that the left would own the cultural zeitgeist forever? This whole approach to politics was folly.

It’s just a tool, a weapon im their arsenal. They are still pushing the free speech narrative in other places, eg. Europe, when people try to stop candidates and pundits from lying. But then obviously once they succeed lying their way into power that tool isn’t necessary anymore, and controlling speech becomes important.

I think you’re right on Kimmel while being wrong about TFA.

The president does not get to dictate broadcasting licenses on the basis of whether or not they criticize him but ABC is not required to platform Kimmel.

(I think it’s a bad move to deplatform people and bad for democracy but it’s been misconstrued into an issue of constitutional guarantees and it is not one.)

Have you not read the news that abc was pressured by the fcc wrt a pending merger?

Isn’t that the federal govt “abridging the freedom of the press” ?

> Was the assumption that the left would own the cultural zeitgeist forever?

Yes, that was clearly the assumption. It's hard to blame them; that had been the case for 50+ years, and the early 2020s suggested that they had the system licked and would be fully in charge until their internal contradictions brought them down.

>All of the arguments used to excuse cancel culture ("right to speech not to a platform", "it's a company censoring you, not the government", "freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences") are now being leveraged by the right.

Those arguments are correct though. Free speech doesn't guarantee a platform. Freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences. The First Amendment does only apply to the government. None of this was controversial until the right decided shitposting their hot takes on black people and the Holocaust was a fundamental human right.

And they're being leveraged by the same right wing that wanted the government to seize control of social media platforms and force them to allow right-wing content and make moderation illegal. And Jimmy Kimmel's firing was due to pressure by the chair of the FCC, which isn't even the context in which those arguments were made and is an obvious violation of the First Amendment

But zing, I guess..

To play devil's advocate, ABC doesn't have a right to execute a corporate merger and this is what was threatened by the FCC. I don't know what the courts would think of this kind of argument and unfortunately we will probably not find out.

Regardless of that, it certainly seems like some kind of corruption.

> because they were being banned for their hot takes on black people and the Holocaust

This was the sales pitch, but it wasn't reality. People were being banned for much less severe speech than this kind of stuff and the window was slowly creeping towards less and less severe disagreements with the dominant narrative. I think bans for COVID stuff were particularly galling for many people[1].

There's a fair argument that the COVID situation was dire and required drastic action, but this can't be papered over in retrospect by saying that only holocaust deniers and racists were being banned.

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/2/twitter-to-permanent...

Any limitation on their right to merger should be spelled out in a law passed by congress and not from pressure from an executive appointee.

OK, holocaust deniers, racists and anti-vaxxers. The point is, platforms always had a right to ban people, that was always the deal. And it still isn't the same as actual government oppression of free speech, which is clearly what's happening WRT this Charlie Kirk stuff. Even if you take the most cynical, negative interpretation of the COVID misinformation bans and "Twitter Files" to me this still seems categorically worse.

This is extremely out of touch.

Don’t you remember post 9/11 war mongering? Jingoistic country songs?

Was the Supreme Court not almost fully captured in the early 2020s?

Was the majority of news media on television and radio not extremely right leaning?

   "this is what was threatened by the FCC"

For clarity, as parent points out, specific comment from FCC exists. The general sense of threat Disney felt is not the same as a specific FCC comment

When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because this is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because this is according to my principles. - Frank Herbert

From VP Vance:

"In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town; and under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree."

Or as Louis Rossmann calls it, the premise of a-holes.