Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro isn’t about to back down from his company’s battle against the Federal Communications Commission amid the FCC’s threats to ABC shows like The View and Jimmy Kimmel Live!
“Our position on this is clear,” D’Amaro said in a CNBC interview during Disney’s D23 Expo on Friday, per The Daily Beast. “We’re very principled on this. We’re going to stand up to what we believe is journalistic integrity. And we’re not going to be told how to run that side of our business. Our filings, I think, speak for that. I like what we do. We tell incredible stories. I think we do it well. We do it around the world. And we’re going to stay committed to that.”
In April, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr called for a review of the eight Disney-owned ABC stations’ broadcast licenses over the network’s diversity and inclusion practices, according to The New York Times. The FCC had previously targeted The View in an investigation into equal-time rules pertaining to political candidates’ appearances, and the review announcement came one day after President Donald Trump called for Jimmy Kimmel to be fired over a joke the comedian made about him, as the Times reported at the time.
The following month, Disney applied for early renewals for those station’s licenses, saying it was doing so “under protest in response to an unlawful, arbitrary, and unconstitutional order,” according to CNBC. Carr told CNBC at the time that the FCC review was over “concerns about invidious forms of DEI discrimination.”
In a filing to the FCC in July, ABC accused the agency of conducting an “unprecedented” broadcast license review because it “dislikes the content and viewpoints expressed” on ABC programs, per the Times.
“The retaliation against ABC is a signal to every media company in the country: Accommodate the administration’s view of what news coverage should look like or pay the price,” the filing added.
And earlier this week, the American Civil Liberties Union submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the FCC over the agency’s decision to require the early renewal of those broadcast licenses, according to Variety.
“[T]his Request concerns whether the government is using its authority to illegally retaliate against broadcasters for saying something the government dislikes, and whether it is attempting to chill protected speech,” the ACLU said in Tuesday’s FOIA request, Variety adds. “The publicly released information about why the FCC is asking 8 ABC stations to renew their broadcast licenses early does not seem credible in context, and information about the FCC’s true motivations is not available publicly.”