I was going to add this on to the Jimmy Kimmel thread, but I really think it deserves its own thread. Very simply, Trump is now saying the FCC should pull the license of any station that talks negatively about him. There is no fig leaf of calling it “hate speech” or “speech likely to incite imminent lawless action” or “political speech from a media outlet given a federal license”. And he didn’t even say “The President”. No, it is specifically talking bad about him. But the clincher is he finished his statement about media outlets talking bad about him with a “They can’t do that.”
Rather than ask for a cite, I’ll provide one:
US Democracy is doomed.
It’s like this administration read “The 14 Characteristics of Fascism”, by Lawrence Britt and said, “hey that’s an excellent template we could use!”
But–TV Networks are not under FCC License.
Only Local Broadcast stations.
Federal employees already have their personal social media accounts being monitored for ANY negative comments about Trump, subject to discipline including termination. I am personally aware this is already occurring with several agencies. There is information filtering down that Trump is considering any public demonstrations by federal employees (think No Kings) will result in discipline as well, including termination.
It is much worse than people can fathom and about to get worse. Much, much worse.
I didn’t provide one since I didn’t see it in an article but rather heard the soundbite. Talking about himself in the third person and that ending of “They can’t do that.” was chillng.
Hasn’t technology outpaced the government regulations?
it is my understanding that the FCC has to issue broadcast licenses because there is only a finite amount of space available on the radio spectrum to broadcast a television signal. If the broadcasts are unregulated, they’d overlap and you’d just get noise.
But now you can broadcast a show via the internet, which no longer runs the risk of overlapping signals.
Television is antiquated technology. Just broadcast online. Unless the government shuts down the internet, isn’t that a workaround?
The Internet goes through regulated corporations. The big Internet companies have business with the government, that can be leveraged like the merger approvals have been. I don’t mean to be a downer, but I doubt Google will show much more backbone than Disney. We still should protest, but “new tech” is not a complete solution.
And, in January of this year, the net neutrality rules were struck down.
Each network owns a number of wildly profitable local stations in the largest cities in the country. They are limited by law in that number, but other corporations are not. The two largest owners are Nexstar and Sinclair, both extremely conservative organizations. Nexstar owns Newsnation. Sinclair replaced Jimmy Kimmel with a mandatory hour-long tribute to Charlie Kirk.
The FCC can’t shut down a network. So what. It can gut the body of a network by going after the organs. That’s not chump change. The networks took in $40 billion in advertising revenue last year.
And there’s that minor ancillary issue of the end of free speech.
That’s an interesting take, despite it totally ignoring history, precedent, consistency, fact, law, and the Constitution.
ETA: see also…
“Hateful?” Where?
When using the fascists’ own words against them, I suppose it IS hateful,since it was hateful when they said it.
OR, nothing he said was hateful. Nor obstructionist.
ALSO, ALSO OR, you are trolling.
Trumpbon?
Sounds like a nasty fuzzy candy in grammas purse. Orange of course.
Or a feminine hygiene product.
Or an anti-flatulence sucky sweet.
He’s going all in:
The Pentagon will drastically change its rules for journalists who cover the Department of Defense, two U.S. officials who are not authorized to speak publicly confirmed to NPR Friday. The move drew sharp criticism from news organizations, who said it violated the bedrock of a free press.
Going forward, journalists must sign a pledge not to gather any information, including unclassified reports, that hasn’t been authorized for release.
There is no doubt the current government is going full-fascist.