Nearly 70 Percent of Americans Say It's Unacceptable for Government to Pressure Broadcasters to Take a Show Off Air
Americans aren't with Trump and Carr on Jimmy Kimmel
Not long after publishing my post last week, I came across the latest survey conducted by YouGov for The Economist. The survey had a series of interesting results about the controversy surrounding Jimmy Kimmel. As I mentioned in my previous post, Kimmel’s comments in the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk were dumb, inappropriate, and factually inaccurate. However, Americans are showing more grace than Donald Trump and FCC Chair Brendan Carr.
Although we don’t have a comparison for Kimmel to measure what effect his dumb comments about the political leanings of Kirk’s murderer have had or to gauge the impact of Trump’s criticism of Kimmel, the survey shows Kimmel with a favorability rating above water with adults (+6) and registered voters (+8). Partisan leanings may define how someone views Kimmel, but his favorability rating with independents is +16.1
Fully 90 percent of adults and 93 percent of registered voters had heard a lot or a little about Kimmel being taken off the air by ABC. Although 36 percent of adults and 38 percent of registered voters approve of Jimmy Kimmel Live! being taken off the air, 48 percent of adults and 51 percent of registered voters disapprove.
Party identification tells the story. If you’re a Democrat, you’re likely to disapprove of ABC’s move. If you’re a Republican, you’re likely to approve of it. Independents tend to disapprove. Ordinarily, I would chalk this up to Republicans reflexively siding with Trump, but Kimmel’s comments were exceedingly dumb and, like him or not, Charlie Kirk was a beloved figure in the conservative movement. The partisan divide here is far more understandable than it is on kitchen-table issues like the economy or inflation.
Where the issue is more cut-and-dry is on whether adults and registered voters see government pressure on broadcasters to remove shows over speech with which it disagrees. It’s not even close. Only 13 percent of adults and 13 percent of registered voters believe it’s acceptable while 68 percent and 69 percent see it as unacceptable. Although a plurality of Republicans find it unacceptable for the government to pressure broadcasters to take a show off the air over speech, 30 percent see it as acceptable. Only 3 percent of Democrats and 7 percent of independents consider it acceptable while 88 percent and 74 percent say it’s unacceptable.
Although adults and registered voters have mixed opinions on the motives of the individual who murdered Kirk, 31 percent of adults and 35 percent of registered voters said he was motivated by left-wing beliefs. There are still some who believe the killer was motivated by right-wing beliefs, but that’s predominantly driven by people who identify as Democrats. Only 7 percent of Democrats say he was motivated by left-wing beliefs. I should note that 32 percent of adults and 27 percent of registered voters aren’t sure of the killer’s motives. That figure is even higher among independents, at 37 percent. Although 26 percent of independents cite the killer’s left-wing beliefs as the motivation for Kirk’s murder, 23 percent of independents say it was something other than political beliefs.
What do we take from this? The clearest takeaway is that Americans aren’t too keen on the government pressuring broadcasters to remove shows from the airwaves because they disagree with the speech on the show. Right now, the perception is that FCC Chair Brendan Carr made such a threat,2 and that’s what we publicly know. Of course, we don’t know if Carr privately put his finger on the scale. However, we do know that Trump and Carr have both floated the idea of penalizing broadcasters, if not outright threatened.3
We need some education about First Amendment jurisprudence. Look, the right to free speech isn’t absolute. As broad as the right to free speech is, there are limits in place. However, the First Amendment protects unpopular speech, including “hate speech.” Individuals have the right to criticize their government, elected officials, policies, political pundits and talking heads, cable news networks, etc. That’s as American as apple pie. There’s nothing to compel an individual not to be blindly partisan in their criticism, nor should there be.
Criticism also doesn’t mean incitement. Certainly, the political atmosphere in the United States is as tense as it has been in my lifetime. Elected officials and pundits on both sides need to choose their words carefully and strive to bring down the temperature in our politics. The Brandenburg test explains that speech must be “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and “likely to incite or produce such an action” to be regulated. The Brandenburg test is still a binding precedent and has been applied by the Supreme Court in Hess v. Indiana (1973) and NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. (1982). As recently as Counterman v. Colorado (2023), the Supreme Court noted the Brandenburg test framework.
Then again, we need to stop treating politics as religion, the two main denominations of which are Democratic and Republican, and political philosophies as articles of faith.
Just to have one comparison here, Trump’s favorabilty rating with adults is underwater, 39/56 (-17). His favorability with registered voters is 42/56 (-14). Although 85 percent of Republicans have a favorable view of Trump, only 26 percent of independents share that view. Roughly two in three independents (64 percent) have an unfavorable view of Trump. The survey also looked at Charlie Kirk’s favorables, but there were decent percentages who had neither a favorable or unfavorable opinion of him or didn’t know. Overall, Kirk was slightly above water with adults (+1) and registered voters (+2).
Carr has denied that he made an explicit threat, but his comments certainly come off like a threat. He said, “we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” That’s jawboning, folks. Carr denying an explicit threat is pretty pointless. Read between the lines.
This is definitely true with Trump.