Jane Fonda, the actor and activist who is the founder of the modern Committee for the First Amendment, strongly criticized the FCC’s order requiring Disney’s ABC-owned local stations to apply for early renewal of their broadcast licenses. The agency’s order Tuesday came a day after President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump called for Disney and ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel over a joke he made about Melania looking like “an expectant widow.”
“FCC Chair Brendan Carr’s latest order to review the broadcast license of all ABC stations is a naked attempt to weaponize government power against dissent,” Fonda said in a statement provided to Variety.
Fonda continued, “What we are seeing fits a deliberate and deeply troubling pattern of authoritarian regimes throughout history — and it should alarm anyone who believes in the First Amendment and the fundamental principle that the government has no authority to decide who gets to speak in a free society. Together, we must call this out clearly and forcefully for what it is: the systematic use of federal power to narrow the range of acceptable speech until only approved voices remain.”
The FCC’s Media Bureau, in its order, said it was calling in ABC’s licenses for eight owned-and-operated stations for early review pursuant to an investigation into Disney and ABC over potential violations of the FCC’s “prohibition on unlawful discrimination” — meaning the agency is specifically probing the media conglomerate’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices.
But the timing of the order left the distinct impression that the FCC was acting in response to conservatives’ outrage over Kimmel’s joke. The licenses for ABC’s eight stations were not due for renewal until 2028 at the earliest, with some not due until 2031.
In a statement about the FCC’s order, a Disney spokesperson said in part: “ABC and its stations have a long record of operating in full compliance with FCC rules and serving their local communities with trusted news, emergency information, and public‑interest programming. We are confident that record demonstrates our continued qualifications as licensees under the Communications Act and the First Amendment and are prepared to show that through the appropriate legal channels.”
The FCC has not commented beyond the Media Bureau’s order.
On the April 27 episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” the late-night host defended his remark about Melania as “a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am. It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination. And they know that.” He also said, “I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject,” adding in a remark aimed at the First Lady, “And I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it.”
Last October, Fonda relaunched the Committee for the First Amendment, a McCarthy-era initiative founded in the 1940s by her father, Henry Fonda, to protect against attacks on free speech.
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