Category: News

UPDATED, with FCC comment: ABC said that the FCC’s demand for an early review of its broadcast station licenses was part of an “ongoing retaliation campaign” to punish the network over its news coverage and create a chilling effect on free speech.

In a filing made public on Thursday, the network’s legal team also warned that the FCC’s action — demanding an early review of the licenses for the network’s eight owned stations — reflected a wider effort to crack down on the media. The network’s filing identified multiple instances in which Trump has called for the network to lose its license.

“The retaliation against ABC is a signal to every media company in the country: accommodate the Administration’s view of what news coverage should look like or pay the price,” the network’s legal team wrote.  “Across the government, regulatory and contracting carrots and sticks have been trained on disfavored speakers. The tools vary; the objective does not: a media industry too fearful of official reprisal to report the news freely.”

ABC’s filing cited instances of threats that Trump has made against the network over its news coverage and its handling of the 2024 presidential debate, and referred to other instances in which the administration has gone after other outlets and political opponents.

In April, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, called for the network to apply for an early renewal of the station licenses, citing an investigation of the network’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices. Such an action is highly unusual, and the first of ABC station licenses were not set to expire until 2028.

Carr then opened up a public comment proceeding, with conservative groups like the Media Research Center and the Center for American Rights calling for the network’s licenses to be pulled. The deadline for responses, including from ABC, was on Wednesday.

The FCC chairman has not said when the agency will make a decision. But in a sign that the network has been preparing for a legal battle, it has recently retained Beth Wilkinson, who is part of the Paramount and Nexstar legal teams as they defend proposed mergers amid antitrust lawsuits brought by state attorneys general. Disney’s legal team is led by Horacio Gutierrez, chief legal and global affairs officer, and includes Paul Clement, the former solicitor general and Supreme Court lawyer, and Jennifer Tatel.

The network said that its stations “easily meet the standard for license renewal,” which is a showing that they operate in the public interest. The network has cited support from a range of community groups, press freedom organizations and former FCC chairs and top ranking officials, as well as conservative and free market groups like Americans for Tax Reform.

The network launched an ad campaign, urging viewers to weigh in with the FCC, warning that the agency is “questioning our commitment to the community.” More than 153,000 comments were submitted in the proceeding. ABC said that, based on an AI analysis of comments almost 86% of the tens of thousands of comments submitted to the FCC support renewal of the licenses, and another 10% objected to the FCC.

In its filing, the network’s legal team wrote that the FCC has “resorted to intimidation,” citing Carr’s previous warnings over a joke that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel told about the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination. On Benny Johnson’s podcast, Carr chided Kimmel for the remark, and said, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

The ABC legal team wrote, “The FCC has spent the last 18 months searching for some pretext for revoking the Stations’ licenses. The Commission has found none, because the Stations easily meet the standard for license renewal—which under the law means that the Commission cannot revoke their licenses or order a hearing on their renewal applications.”

ABC said that the DEI investigation has found no violation, while even “if any violation were ever substantiated, the Commission has a graduated set of well-established remedies far short of the corporate death penalty of license non-renewal.” The network’s legal team warned that any FCC sanction over DEI would raise due process concerns, as the policies being challenged were encouraged by the FCC two years ago, when Joe Biden was president and Democrats held a majority on the commission.

Carr also has been investigating The View and whether it qualifies as a bona fide news program. That would make it exempt from the FCC’s Equal Time rule, which requires stations that feature political candidates to provide comparable time to rivals, if requested. The network also has pushed back on that proceeding, arguing that it received exemption guidance in 2002, and that the FCC was selectively enforcing the rule.

Among the groups also weighing in recently was the National Association of Broadcasters, which warned that the early renewals “will inevitably discourage investment in the broadcast industry.” They, too, contended that editorial decisions were constitutionally protected and outside the bounds of the agency’s authority.

A spokesperson for the FCC said, “For decades, Americans of all stripes have been subsidizing broadcast media to the tune of many billions of dollars by giving TV stations free use of a valuable, public resource—the airwaves.  In exchange, broadcasters are required by law to operate in the public interest—not in the narrow or partisan interests of a political party.”

The spokesperson added, “Broadcasters know that they are prohibited from engaging in invidious forms of DEI discrimination, that they must comply with political equal opportunity regulations, and that they are barred from running broadcast hoaxes or distorting the news.  The FCC is going to hold broadcasters accountable to the full extent of the law, regardless of any disinformation campaign that some of them may choose to run.”

Technically, the FCC licenses stations, not networks. During his tenure at the FCC, Carr has said that he wants to boost local stations in their leverage vis a vis the major networks, while defending his investigations into programming as within the bounds of the agency’s authority. He has cited the requirement that stations serve the public interest, a rather broad term that has invited complaints over the network’s news and other coverage.

In its petition to deny ABC station licenses, the Center for American Rights argued that the network show “a consistent and overt partisan bias to its programming over multiple shows.” Other arguments raised included that its stations run a “race and culture effort that intentionally brings an ideological agenda to local newsrooms and documentary shows.”

Among other things, they cited Kimmel’s political donations and partisan activity and claimed that he uses his show as a “propaganda platform to advance his personal political views.” They pointed to the partisan bent of his jokes and guests, as well as “his infamous 2024 pre-election plea to vote for Kamala Harris delivered nationwide over the airwaves, which would have cost millions of dollars if it had been classified as an advertisement rather than a show monologue.”

In the network’s filing, ABC’s legal team wrote that the agency has “repeatedly emphasized” that it has limited authority to act on content complaints. They noted that the agency long ago abandoned the Fairness Doctrine, which required stations to present varying points of view on issues of public importance. The FCC’s news distortion and broadcast hoax policies, ABC’s legal team said, are very narrow in scope.

While the petitioners calling for license revocations do not invoke the news distortion policy, the network’s legal team noted, “they nevertheless complain that ABC ‘routinely broadcasts misinformation, disinformation, and other fake news’ and that various ABC network programs aired too many ‘anti-Trump team reports,’ too much ‘positive’ coverage of Kamala Harris, and did not devote enough time ‘letting viewers know just how much Trump had reduced border crossings compared to his predecessor.’  But these are complaints about editorial balance—decisions about which stories to cover, which candidate to feature, and how much emphasis to give different topics—or editorial commentary.”

They added, “Denying the Stations’ renewals just because they aired ABC network programming that the Commission later deemed ‘DEI TV’ or too ‘anti-Trump’ would stretch the rule far beyond the First Amendment’s bounds.”

Anna Gomez, the sole Democrat on the FCC, said in a statement that a “small number of partisan voices tried to hijack this process into a referendum on a network they dislike, but the public refuses to let local stations become collateral damage in the FCC’s political games. The FCC has no authority to police the ideological balance of the airwaves, and no matter what this Commission does next, the record now makes clear that this was never a genuine search for the public interest.”

Fox News topped the July ratings, but among the major cable news networks, MS NOW and CNN made gains during the month versus 2025.

In primetime, Fox News averaged 2.33 million viewers, down 3% from the same month in 2025. MS NOW averaged 1.02 million, up 18%, while CNN posted 658,000, up 32%. In the 25-54 demo, Fox News averaged 204,000, down 21%, while CNN posted 102,000, up 11%, and MS NOW averaged 89,000, up 10%.

In total day, Fox News averaged 1.5 million, down 2%, compared to 636,000 for MS NOW, up 20%, and 465,000 for CNN, up 26%. In the 25-54 demo, Fox News averaged 137,000, down 26%, while CNN posted 62,000, flat from a year earlier, and MS NOW was at 57,000, up 10%.

Fox News’ The Five was the most watched show, averaging 3.31 million, followed by Jesse Watters Primetime with 2.98 million, Gutfeld! with 2.63 million, Hannity with 2.55 million and Special Report with Bret Baier with 2.52 million. In the 25-54 demo, the top shows were The Five with 300,000, followed by Jesse Watters Primetime with 267,000, Gutfeld! with 249,000, Hannity with 238,000 and Special Report with 224,000.

MS NOW’s top show was The Rachel Maddow Show, averaging 2 million viewers, and CNN’s most watched program was Anderson Cooper 360, posting 739,000.

Among other news networks, NewsNation averaged 141,000 in primetime and 15,000 in the 25-54 demo. The network said that their primetime total viewers rose by 32% versus last year and 25% in the demo. Newsmax averaged 202,000 in primetime and 9,000 in the demo.

Newsmax’s top show was Rob Schmitt Tonight, averaging 306,000, and the top show on NewsNation was Cuomo, averaging 230,000.

The figures are from Nielsen via the networks.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins gave her take on Donald Trump‘s very personal insults of her at the recent White House Correspondents’ Dinner, telling The Daily Show host Jon Stewart that the key in such situations is to focus on the work at hand.

In his one hour remarks at the dinner on Friday, Trump went after Collins and other journalists, to the point that CNN released a statement when he was still on stage defending their reporters. Collins had received an award from the WHCA earlier in the evening.

“It’s really not about me, and I don’t want it to be about my reaction,” Collins told Stewart. “And so I think if you let it become about that, then it becomes a back and forth between the two of us. … And so I just think in those moments it’s important to put the reminder back on the work, in the question, and on the non-answers that we get.”

Collins did note the lack of reaction to many of Trump’s remarks as he spoke at the dinner, his first time appearing before the group as president. Among other things, Trump went on about how Collins doesn’t smile, something he has done before.

Stewart asked Collins about whether the evening “felt surreal.”

“Was he bombing as hard as it appeared on the TV?” he asked.

Collins replied, “You know, I’ve covered Trump for 10 years, and so I’ve listened to pretty much all of his speeches for 10 years, with very little exception. And so I actually think its helpful for other people to be able to listen to them in their entirety, when people don’t that much these days. In the room, I think I was not surprised when he insulted me. That happens pretty regularly inside the Oval Office. This is just a bigger venue where it was happening. What was most surprising to me was the room was filled with a lot of his staffers, his cabinet, his allies, Republicans in Congress. It was so quiet in the room during the president’s remarks.”

Collins, who is CNN’s chief White House correspondent, also talked about the differences in the press corps since Trump’s first term. The White House this term has made a point of including more friendlier outlets in the pool. While noting that reporters should be able to ask whatever they want, Collins noted that the friendlier questions may come at the cost of pressing Trump on follow ups.

“I’ve never gotten in a back and forth with him,” she said. “I’ve always brought it back to the question. I think he does surround himself with people who praise him or laugh at his jokes, and when he’s confronted with someone who is asking a challenging question or a critical question of his policy or strategy in the Iran war, I think he doesn’t like it and lashes out over it. I mean, there have been moments where I’ve gone into the Oval Office … on behalf of the TV pool and I haven’t even asked a question yet, and he starts criticizing me. So it’s not even always just about the questions. Sometimes it’s my presence in the room.”