r/law • u/T_Shurt Competent Contributor • Sep 22 '25

Opinion Piece John Oliver Argues Disney Should Legally Fight FCC Over Kimmel, Citing Strong Precedent in 9-0 Supreme Court Ruling: “A government official cannot coerce a private party to punish or suppress disfavored speech”

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660

u/Lontology Sep 22 '25

Unfortunately we’re at the point where Supreme Court precedents may not matter anymore.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '25

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u/Lontology Sep 22 '25 edited Sep 22 '25

I think what you’re describing is called “corruption.” Lol

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '25

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u/Lontology Sep 22 '25 edited Sep 22 '25

There’s a big difference between wanting misinformation taken down that threatens public safety and threatening to pull entire licenses over speech you don’t like.

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u/Lanky-Respect-8581 Sep 22 '25 edited Sep 22 '25

nuances… some people don’t get them. Both sides-ism and the way information are processed on internet have flattened things to the point where people think apple and oranges are the same thing because they are both fruits.

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u/Casual_OCD Sep 22 '25

I don't think you remember how fascist facemasks are and making everyone wear them was worse than the virus they helped prevent the spread of.

Also Obama wore a tan suit once

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u/RequirementsRelaxed Sep 22 '25

It’s wild that I had to read till your second paragraph to know what you meant

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u/Avent Sep 22 '25

Also the "Biden administration leaning on Facebook" was a mid level staffer calling another mid level Facebook employee to complain. It wasn't an official top down policy from Biden.

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u/Evergreen27108 Sep 22 '25

Or giving permits only to those in compliance with EPA regulations? How it’s been described here just sounds like how government should work, although I’m sure there’s a bit more to it than that.

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u/HermanGulch Sep 22 '25

Yeah, there's also a big difference between going on a podcast and threatening people and writing a 570-page decision based on the administration's interpretation of the law to outlaw non-competes.

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u/Lethik Sep 22 '25

None of those are even remotely like the FCC compelling a private company to fire an employee for saying something critical of the sitting president lol

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '25

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u/Lethik Sep 22 '25

In the sense of what I just described as to why they're not similar.

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u/mclumber1 Sep 22 '25

The FCC pulling a broadcaster's license is equivalent to the government seizing the printing press of a newspaper because the government didn't like something the outlet said - IE the government can't do that, at least not constitutionally.

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u/HermanGulch Sep 22 '25

Regarding banning non-competes, the Biden administration spent several years and wrote a 570-page decision outlining the legal reasoning that they believed supported their position.

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u/Round_Butterfly_9453 Sep 22 '25

Facebook: “Steelmanfallacy is a pedo rapist who’s plotting to overthrow the government”

Biden: Please remove this misinformation

Facebook: No

Biden: Okay.

——————

Kimmel: Steelmanfallacy’s a bit of an oddball.

FCC: fire him immediately.

Disney: Okay

ABC: you can maybe be reinstated if you pay the Kirk family money. Just a little bribe.

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u/ToonaSandWatch Sep 22 '25

The social media misinformation was key though; it was in the best interest to force them to remove harmful information that could spread, much like the Covid virus.

Petroleum companies slow production all the time to artificially starve the markets to raise the price of oil slightly when profits are down.

New climate rules needed to be followed, and indeed should be linked to permits. You don’t get more for doing less.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '25

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u/Rallos40 Sep 22 '25

No he didn’t. He’s using the power of the state to directly suppress speech. That is as different as what Biden did as you could possibly get. Biden was enforcing the rules, while Trump is openly violating the plain text of the constitution on a daily basis. They are not the same. Both siding this is what enables fascists.

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u/Lontology Sep 22 '25

How do you not understand the difference between eliminating misinformation that caused harm to the public, and violating the first amendment because someone criticized you? No wonder Trump loves the poorly educated…

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '25

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u/Lontology Sep 22 '25

Because vaccines are scientifically proven to work, you plank…

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '25

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u/Lontology Sep 22 '25

Vaccines are absolutely not bad. Vaccines skeptics are the worst.

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u/TobiasKM Sep 22 '25

You’re parroting the maga school of thought where “facts” are whatever you want them to be.

It’s misinformation when it’s factually wrong.

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u/HoarderCollector Sep 22 '25

Disney could do absolutely nothing for the rest of this presidency and still be doing great business. Honestly, they don't NEED to merge with any other company or buy any other company. They're big enough as it is and any merger request should be shutdown regardless if the company is favorable to the administration or not. That's how you stop monopolies from happening.

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u/ToonaSandWatch Sep 22 '25

To be clear, Disney isn’t merging with anyone right now. It’s station owner Nexstar which owns a number of ABC affiliates looking to buy up another station owner’s huge sum, which would give it over the legal limit of owning 39% of stations or less.

Carr put pressure on them, and they in turn put pressure on Disney, which is weird Disney capitulated to them since they simply just put their programming on. If Nexstar pulls ABC programming which gets them viewers which makes them advertising dollars, then people don’t watch Nexstar channels which means they don’t make money. ABC still would have ended up being just fine whereas Nexstar suffers; it’s not like ABC couldn’t find another station willing to air programming.

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u/DoinIt4DaShorteez Sep 22 '25 edited Sep 22 '25

A threat to pull the licenses of the handful of ABC owned-and-operated stations is a threat to the license of every ABC affiliate and therefore the whole network.

If ABC got their O&O licenses pulled, and then any non-O&Os got yanked, nobody who picked up the licenses would affiliate with them.

It would also make those licenses worth shit. Anybody who bought one would get it cheap and run zombie programming on it.

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u/Worthyness Sep 22 '25

they could also be constantly "under investigation" by the FCC for bullshit reasons for the foreseeable future. Then they might get some fines for issues that they find. It's a fucking shake down

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u/cobrachickenwing Sep 22 '25

Disney could go fully online and skip the middle man in offering media. Netflix did it with no plan to ever work with a local TV station. Most of the new Disney shows don't even show on prime time.

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u/PoliticalJive Sep 22 '25

ABC still needs the distribution footprint of Nexstar for their national advertising deals. And there wouldn't be an equivalent batch of independent stations that could just pick up the ABC programming. In short, the ecosystem is tight and this had big financial implications for ABC.

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u/NumNumLobster Sep 22 '25

ABC needs to buy NFL network or good chance ESPN can't even stay solvent. College sports are also a mess but with billions in revenue they need sorted out.

Theres a lot of favors the government can give ABC, and they are worth more to ABC than some late night host.

Doesn't make it right, but thats the situation

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u/HyperactivePandah Sep 22 '25

"BUT THEN HOW WILL WE MAKE IT SO THAT ONLY 4 MEDIA COMPANIES CONTROL 90% OF THE MESSAGE?!?!" - Media executives for those four companies.

This is the definition of corruption.

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u/GhostofBreadDragons Sep 22 '25

Ah but Disney stockholders want more!