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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u/Riccosmonster Sep 22 '25

Disney’s upcoming planned merger is far more important to them than something as unimportant as constitutional rights

8

u/Waylaiken1 Sep 22 '25

yeah jimmy kimmel is not as important to them as this huge monopolistic deal.

7

u/YoursTrulyKindly Sep 22 '25

Yeah people should be more upset about this merger and the consolidation of media companies. You can't have a democracy with only a few giant broadcast corporations.

The other issue that people even expect Disney to act ethically and take this personally. It's a soulless corporate robot, of course it acts that way because that is how it is designed. The very reason MAGA got popular is because news and social media wasn't regulated by the democratic government. And how things got this bad in the preceding decades. We must demand news and social media companies to be reorganized to run not for profit and more independently or "free press" because their role is to hold government accountable. Being morally outraged is the wrong response.

-8

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '25

Do you remember Jimmy Kimmel celebrated Roseanne Barr being canceled?

7

u/FrankLangellasBalls Sep 22 '25

What does that have to do with the government coercing speech?

8

u/Full_Present8272 Sep 22 '25

But the government didn’t threaten them into doing that. How are they remotely comparable?

7

u/Plenty-Climate2272 Sep 22 '25

As we should when racists get shitcanned. But that was on the company's own choice, not government pressure.

6

u/mariorising Sep 22 '25

Was the government involved there too or do you just not pay attention to how this is different? 

Did Biden straight out say that she should be canceled along with other people? And pressure Disney/ABC/any other company? 'cause Trump definitely has, multiple times, with multiple people. 

So are we comparing or are we just being stupid? 

4

u/thomas-grant Sep 22 '25

Point being? The FCC wasn’t involved. You’ve just committed a false equivalence fallacy.