Opinion
Guest
Essay
We Can No
Longer Tell Ourselves This Isn’t Really Happening
Sept. 19,
2025
By
Michael Hirschorn
Mr.
Hirschorn is the chief executive of Ish Entertainment.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/opinion/jimmy-kimmel-trump-media-government.html
Until
Wednesday’s shocking announcement that ABC was canceling Jimmy Kimmel’s
late-night show indefinitely because of comments he made about Charlie Kirk’s
killing, it was possible, if one squinted hard enough, to pretend that a broad
free speech crackdown was not underway. The down-the-road cancellation of
Stephen Colbert’s late-night show on CBS was chalked up to financial concerns,
though anyone in the business not paid to think otherwise believes Mr.
Colbert’s elegant skewerings of President Trump and MAGA were the real reason.
The
silencing of Mr. Kimmel, following an explicit threat by Brendan Carr, the head
of ABC’s regulator, the Federal Communications Commission, is the mask of “free
speech” coming off for good.
“We can
do this the easy way or the hard way,” Mr. Carr told a far-right podcaster on
Wednesday, suggesting that the government would take action against Disney,
ABC’s parent company, if it failed to dispense with Mr. Kimmel. Two owners of
local ABC affiliates, Nexstar and Sinclair — both of which are known for their
right-leaning political orientation, and both of which have pending deals that
need the F.C.C.’s approval — had reportedly already demanded action. Disney
caved within a day. There was some vague talk of finding a pathway for Mr.
Kimmel to return, but his contract is up in May and he is highly unlikely to
ever host on network television again.
The
clampdown on establishment media and entertainment isn’t just getting started.
Incited by Mr. Trump’s thin-skinned responses to even the mildest mockery or
criticism, and inflamed by political opportunism in the wake of Mr. Kirk’s
death, it is far further along than most people may realize. Everyone now is
waiting for word on what will happen to Jon Stewart, the one-day-a-week host of
“The Daily Show,” which like Mr. Colbert’s, comes under Paramount’s umbrella.
Mr. Stewart this summer ended a segment on Mr. Colbert’s cancellation with a
rousing song, backed by a gospel chorus and filled with profanity, spewing
invective at his corporate overlords.
After the
recent sale of Paramount, those overlords are now Skydance Media, run by David
Ellison, the son of one of Mr. Trump’s biggest supporters, Larry Ellison, the
centibillionaire chief executive of Oracle. Numerous media reports suggest that
the younger Mr. Ellison will install a new leader at CBS News: Bari Weiss, the
former New York Times editor and writer who founded The Free Press, a
particularly deft practitioner of the shell-game politics of free speech.
Skydance has also announced a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent
company of CNN, and Oracle is part of the consortium Mr. Trump assembled for
the possible purchase of the U.S. version of TikTok. That hat trick would give
the Ellisons unrivaled power over both old and new media. Federal regulators
are unlikely to object.
With the
exception of Netflix, a hugely profitable public company without apparent
immediate need for government favor, every studio is either already compromised
or about to be. ABC, and by extension Disney, already paid off Mr. Trump after
he filed a comically spurious lawsuit targeting the “Good Morning America”
co-host George Stephanopoulos. CBS had gone that same route over a lawsuit
involving minor edits to a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris. NBC’s
soon-to-be-spun-off subsidiary, MSNBC, just fired a contributor for comments
about Mr. Kirk. With Mr. Kimmel gone, Mr. Trump is now demanding the ouster of
two NBC late-night hosts, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon. Perhaps he was offended
by one of Mr. Fallon’s bits about puppies or holiday sweaters.
Amazon’s
and Apple’s media operations are mere appendages to the companies’ core
businesses, which makes them even less promising candidates to take risks on
content. Amazon is currently making a feverishly unanticipated documentary
about Melania Trump, for which she will be paid at least $28 million. The
company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, is also the owner of The Washington Post, which
just fired its only Black opinion columnist for — perhaps you’re spotting a
trend here — posting measured criticism of Mr. Kirk. Apple’s media division, to
its credit, has yet to slaughter any of its programming as tribute, though the
parent company’s chief executive felt it necessary last month to present Mr.
Trump with a “customized plaque with a 24-carat gold base,” according to
Politico.
The
problem, of course, is that mainstream media — by which I mean the major media
conglomerates that control most of the TV and movies you watch, music you hear
and books and news you read — is in long-term decline, and therefore weakest at
precisely the moment it is most needed to serve as a bulwark for free
expression and democracy. Perhaps that’s why the Trump administration picked it
as his latest primary target.
All of
which is why the premiere episode of this season of “South Park” — featuring a
thrillingly crass depiction of Mr. Trump’s talking micro-penis and scenes of
him in bed with Satan — “had the impact of a primal scream,” as Richard
Rushfield wrote in The Ankler. “Finally, someone was just saying it all. And
doing it in a way that dispensed with the politeness with which we’ve tiptoed
around every problem that’s come our way, with an unmistakably profane middle
finger in the face of a crackpot demanding servility.”
The irony
is that this kind of middle-finger entertainment, or even entertainment that is
thought-provoking, is more popular than ever. That “South Park” episode scored
the highest ratings the show has gotten since 1999. It’s in good company. The
director Ryan Coogler’s blockbuster Oscar contender “Sinners,” which used a
vampire metaphor to make a deep statement about the cultural exploitation of
Black people, has — despite its 137-minute run time — brought in nearly $400
million worldwide for Warner Bros.
Bad Bunny
has become one of the most important and most popular musicians in the world
thanks to fiercely political messages. Beyoncé’s spectacularly successful tour
ended on a giant replica of the Statue of Liberty with its mouth taped shut. On
TV, “Andor,” which delved smartly and patiently into the mechanics of fascism,
drove more than $300 million in subscriber revenue for Disney+’s streaming
service. The latest “Superman” remake illustrated Lex Luthor’s villainy by
having him murder an immigrant and use his fortune to corrupt the Pentagon. It
is currently tracking north of $600 million worldwide.
Even
before Mr. Kirk’s death and the crackdown that followed, it almost certainly
took leverage and guile to get these cultural products made and released. The
“South Park” creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, waited until the day of the
broadcast to tell executives from Paramount, with which they had just closed a
$1.5 billion deal, what they had in store for viewers. Mr. Coogler, on the
strength of his prior film, “The Black Panther,” compelled Warner Bros. to give
him complete creative control on “Sinners” — and the eventual rights to the
film, an all-but-unheard-of concession.
Are
arrangements like these going to be possible in the wake of Mr. Kirk’s death?
Paramount has pulled reruns of a “South Park” episode that mocked Mr. Kirk —
even though he had said he was amused by what he saw of the episode. An episode
scheduled for this past Wednesday didn’t make it to air at all. In an Instagram
post, Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone took responsibility, writing, “This one’s on
us.”
“Blink
twice if they’re silencing you, Matt and Trey,” one of the comments said.
The
complaint about so-called big media, historically, was that it was too
commercial. Is it possible that these purveyors of popular culture will ignore
the 50 percent or more of this country that want television, film and music
that doesn’t feel like it was extruded directly from the president’s brain?
Similarly, is it naïve to ask that legacy media respond to the looming threats
of economic and authoritarian oblivion with a certain pluck, a third act,
hey-kids-let’s-put-on-a-show, high-school-musical defiance?
“Get some
guts and do something interesting,” Ben Collins, the former NBC journalist who
is now the chief executive of The Onion, recently said in an interview with
Rolling Stone. “It’s not that hard.” The Onion had just published a parody
editorial titled “Congress, Now More Than Ever, Our Nation Needs Your
Cowardice.”
Of
course, it’s slightly easier to get some guts if, like The Onion, you’re not
part of a big conglomerate. As the former Twitter and other big social media
platforms increasingly come under control of Trump-aligned ownership, that
might be what saves us: alternative journalism platforms such as Substack,
podcasts, the coming boom in low-cost A.I.-enabled video, a handful of studios
like A24 and Neon that are still wedded to daring TV and film. Dozens of small,
independent publications are sprouting up around the country and flexing their
independence. And the growing number of TV journalists who have been fired or
quit their legacy jobs after some disagreement or perceived infraction — Mehdi
Hasan, Terry Moran and Joy Reid come to mind — are gaining enough traction to
begin to be considered a new kind of deconstructed TV network.
Since Mr.
Kimmel’s defenestration, various Hollywood figures have expressed their
objections, as have industry guilds. None of that will matter if the studios
and distributors ignore their creative and business acumen and simply defer to
the wishes of the president and his minions.
Mr.
Trump’s ability to silence his critics remains indirect, for the moment,
meaning that multibillion-dollar conglomerates like Disney could still
theoretically decide to sacrifice a few of those billions to assert the right
to actually speak freely. There’s no telling how soon that right, too, might be
gone.
Michael Hirschorn is the chief executive of Ish Entertainment.
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