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Rand Paul: FCC chair had "no business" intervening in ABC/Kimmel controversy

(arstechnica.com)
125 points voxadam | 14 comments | 22 Sep 25 20:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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ahmeneeroe-v2 ◴[22 Sep 25 21:05 UTC] No.45339423[source]▶
The FCC exists (in part) to enforce a certain morality on public broadcasters. Whatever we think about that today, that was a core responsibility of the FCC when it started and that still exists today.
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voxadam ◴[22 Sep 25 21:10 UTC] No.45339475[source]▶
> The FCC is barred by law from trying to prevent the broadcast of any point of view. The Communications Act prohibits the FCC from censoring broadcast material, in most cases, and from making any regulation that would interfere with freedom of speech. Expressions of views that do not involve a “clear and present danger of serious, substantive evil” come under the protection of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press and prevents suppression of these expressions by the FCC. According to an FCC opinion on this subject, “the public interest is best served by permitting free expression of views.” This principle ensures that the most diverse and opposing opinions will be expressed, even though some may be highly offensive.

Source: https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/the_fcc_and_freedom_...

"Last Reviewed: 12/30/19" (Trump's first term)

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ahmeneeroe-v2 ◴[22 Sep 25 21:20 UTC] No.45339592[source]▶
Highly cherry-picked. The next paragraph says that FCC limits broadcast of indecent and profane material.

As I said, the FCC is allowed to enforce a certain morality. It seems clear that the morality being enforced would fall in line with the ruling power of the day.

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1. voxadam ◴[22 Sep 25 21:29 UTC] No.45339710{3}[source]▶
“We hit some 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.”

What part of that sentence qualifies as either indecent or profane?

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2. ahmeneeroe-v2 ◴[22 Sep 25 21:34 UTC] No.45339782[source]▶
I said that the FCC is allowed to enforce morality. The morality in question here is lying about someone being assassinated for their political views. The right sees Charlie Kirk as a political martyr (e.g. their MLK) and they don't want that taken away.
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3. davorak ◴[22 Sep 25 21:37 UTC] No.45339825[source]▶
> The morality in question here is lying about someone being assassinated for their political views.

Please quote Jimmy to clear up what you think the lie was.

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4. ahmeneeroe-v2 ◴[22 Sep 25 22:45 UTC] No.45340552{3}[source]▶
Charlie Kirk was assassinated for his political views. Stated differently: someone with an opposing political viewpoint killed Charlie in order to stop Charlie from promoting Charlie's politics.

Jimmy Kimmel said that Charlie Kirk was killed by someone with the same political views as Charlie.

That is the lie.

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5. platevoltage ◴[22 Sep 25 22:46 UTC] No.45340558[source]▶
I don't think that's what did it. It was the showing of Trump being asked about his "friend" Charlie Kirk being killed, for which his response was "They're building my ballroom. It's gonna be the best ballroom.

Trump has been trying to get Kimmel removed for a while for making fun of him. This was just an opportunity.

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6. davorak ◴[23 Sep 25 00:33 UTC] No.45341457{4}[source]▶
Is there a quote from jimmy you can share and that I can reference?
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7. beej71 ◴[23 Sep 25 04:12 UTC] No.45342773{4}[source]▶
Kimmel did not say that. You need to get the quote right.
8. davorak ◴[23 Sep 25 04:48 UTC] No.45342944{6}[source]▶
I can not start to understand your position without a quote. It has to be something Jimmy said that lead to your beliefs, I know of no better place to start.
replies(1): >>45348405 #
9. suzdude ◴[23 Sep 25 04:54 UTC] No.45342978{6}[source]▶
You're lying about what Kimmel said, and you want to claim others are arguing in bad faith?
10. ahmeneeroe-v2 ◴[23 Sep 25 15:26 UTC] No.45348405{7}[source]▶
No one needs davorak to understand their position. A large swath of the US is angry at Jimmy Kimmel profaning their martyr through a gross lie.

Those angry people have power right now and used their power to punish Jimmy Kimmel.

If you don't understand that, it doesn't affect those people at all.

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11. xracy ◴[23 Sep 25 17:47 UTC] No.45350458[source]▶
What was the opportunity in that segment? Surely airing things the POTUS said is not a limitation of Freedom of the Press?

The thing about the FCC threatening Kimmel for this speech, is that someone needs to identify what was problematic about the speech other than "I didn't like that he said it." I would love for someone to explain to me what the problematic part of the statement was, because I think then we could have a more substantive discussion. As is, this is pretty clearly a 1st amendment violation by the FCC chair as his statements demonstrably chilled speech (it's hard to get much clearer an example than this legally).

12. xracy ◴[23 Sep 25 17:50 UTC] No.45350488{8}[source]▶
Given that this is such an easy ask, I think you should consider not about convincing davorak, but about convincing random lurkers who read your comments.

I might've been swayed had you provided the actual quote, but I think davorak kinda won this argument without doing anything other than asking you for receipts. If your position was so certain you would've just provided the quote.

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13. ahmeneeroe-v2 ◴[23 Sep 25 18:53 UTC] No.45351239{9}[source]▶
The quote is literally in this thread. Read upwards from your own comment. "Random lurkers" (including yourself) would have read it if they followed the thread to this point.

That's why I don't think davorak is here in good faith. Look how close he was to the quote.

What are you doing here? How did you get here without reading the quote?

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14. xracy ◴[24 Sep 25 02:29 UTC] No.45355612{10}[source]▶
Sorry, which part of that quote is the lie?

Also, why didn't you say that it was this quote instead of leading us on this wild goose chase? Or was it just that your comment got flagged?

Can't imagine why that might've been.