Ayn Rand vs. Brendan Carr

Over 60 years ago, in April 1964, Ayn Rand addressed “The Property Status of the Airwaves.” She wrote:

It was [Herbert] Hoover who fought for government control of radio and, as Secretary of Commerce, made repeated attempts to extend government power beyond the limits set by the legislation of the time, attempts to attach detailed conditions to radio licenses, which he had no legal authority to do and which were repeatedly negated by the courts. It was Hoover’s influence that was largely responsible for that tombstone of the radio (and the then unborn television) industry known as the Act of 1927, which established the Federal Radio Commission with all of its autocratic, discretionary, undefined, and undefinable powers. (That Act—with minor revisions and amendments, including the Act of 1934 that changed the Federal Radio Commission into the Federal Communications Commission—is still, in all essential respects, the basic legal document ruling the broadcasting industry today.) …

It was the so-called “conservatives”—including some of the pioneers, some of the broadcasting industry’s executives who, today, are complaining and protesting—who ran to the government for regulations and controls …

The Act of 1927 granted to a government Commission total power over the professional fate of broadcasters, with the “public interest” as the criterion of judgment—and, simultaneously, forbade the Commission to censor radio programs. From the start, and progressively louder through the years, many voices have been pointing out that this is a contradiction impossible to practice. If a commissioner has to judge which applicant for a broadcasting license will best serve the “public interest,” how can he judge it without judging the content, nature, and value of the programs the applicants have offered or will offer? …

The result was what it had to be (illustrating once more the power of basic principles): by gradual, unobtrusive, progressively accelerating steps, the Commission enlarged its control over the content of radio and television programs—leading to open threats and ultimatums … No, the Commission did not censor specific programs: it merely took cognizance of program content at license-renewal time. What was established was worse than open censorship (which could be knocked out in a court of law): it was the unprovable, intangible, insidious censorship-by-displeasure—the usual, and only, result of any non-objective legislation. …

When censorship of radio and television becomes fully accepted, as a fait accompli, it will not be long before all the other media—books, magazines, newspapers, lectures—follow suit, unobtrusively, unofficially, and by the same method: overtly, in the name of the “public interest”; covertly, for fear of government reprisals. (The process is taking place already.)

Alas, the process is in full swing.

On September 15, late night host Jimmy Kimmel made some comments on his ABC show regarding the alleged assassin of Charlie Kirk that irked a few folks. The Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr responded:

This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. … 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.

He emphasized further:

So again, there’s actions we can take on licensed broadcasters. And frankly, I think it’s really past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say, listen: ‘We are going to preempt, we are not going to run Kimmel anymore and so you straighten this out because we, we licensed broadcaster are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.’ So I think again, Disney needs to see some change here but the individual licensed stations that are taking their content, it’s time for them to step up and say this, you know, garbage, to the extent that that’s what comes down the pipe in the future, it isn’t something that we think serves the needs of our local communities. But this sort of status quo is obviously not acceptable where we are.

Disney has decided to preempt Kimmel’s show indefinitely. And Donald Trump is celebrating his victory.

Just as Rand was correct to note that it was the conservatives who shaped the original legislation that gave us the FCC, so too, today’s “conservatives”, those on the reactionary right, are using the FCC as only one constituent of their brutal top-down assault on free expression. Claiming that they are at war with “far-left groups,” they are engaged in threats and in the outright extortion of media, law firms, universities, and corporations.

Their goal is to silence dissent—by any means necessary.

Postscript I: In a spirited discussion on Facebook, some folks advocated the abolition of the FCC. I wrote in response:

The odds of that happening are slim to none. From their inception or through capture, regulatory agencies have been used by the very businesses being regulated to gain some kind of special privilege over their competitors. Even Rand recognized that the FCC was founded with the sanction of the broadcasting industry, the “vested interests” who stood to benefit “gratuitously” from licensure of the airwaves.

At the current time, the Trump administration is using the FCC’s threats to attack free speech, while also employing threats as leverage for the approval of various mergers. We saw this in the administration’s extortion of $16 million paid to Trump’s ‘future presidential library’ by Paramount over a dispute concerning a Kamala Harris interview on “60 Minutes” in July 2025, which somehow (!), miraculously (!) led the FCC to approve its $8 billion merger with Skydance, which closed on August 7, 2025. In the current ABC/Disney dispute, there’s a lot brewing with the ABC affiliate Nextstar’s efforts to close its own proposed merger with Tegna, which would need FCC approval.

But wait! There’s more! Trump has now suggested the delicensing of networks that criticize him. It seems to me that folks should be less concerned with the ‘filth’ on the airwaves, and more concerned with the filth of politics.

Postscript II: I am mystified that the media company Sinclair is asking Kimmel for an apology to the Kirk family—and a donation to the Kirk family and Turning Point USA—as the price to be paid for lifting his suspension. An apology for what? Kimmel didn’t criticize Kirk or the Kirk family. His criticisms were leveled at Trump.

In fact, on the day of the Kirk assassination, Kimmel took to Instagram with this message:

Instead of the angry finger-pointing, can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human? On behalf of my family, we send love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.

Postscript III (September 19, 2025): Comedians fight back … with biting satire. Check out Jon Stewart on the new “government-approved” version of The Daily Show:

And Stephen Colbert gave us “Shut Your Trap”:

Postscript IV (September 22, 2025): Disney/ABC has decided to bring back Jimmy Kimmel starting tomorrow night, Tuesday, September 23, 2025.

It is a victory for free speech, but it remains to be seen how all this plays out with the Trump administration’s obsession with targeting speech that is critical of the President.

Postscript V (September 24, 2025): Jimmy Kimmel made a triumphant return to late night, standing firm on the issue of free speech. Check out his monologue and a cameo appearance by Robert De Niro (as “Brendan Carr”).