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Sinclair Says Kimmel Suspension is Not Enough, Calls on FCC and ABC to Take Additional Action
(marketchameleon.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2025
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politics
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Hey so I just wanna make one point about this that a lot of people aren't going to like
Whenever I said that Substack should be willing to host Nazi blogs, and it's kind of a shame IMO that the whole internet made them partially-stop-but-not-really, one of the things that the crowd of people that always formed to shout at me would be shouting is "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THE FIRST AMENDMENT IT'S A PRIVATE BUSINESS THEY CAN DO WHATEVER THEY WANT IT'S NOT THE GOVERNMENT"
And so what I would say is, free speech is a principle. Everyone gets to talk, no one gets shut out of the marketplace. It doesn't mean anyone has to host speech they don't want to host, but especially in our money-controls-the-means-of-informational-production society, you do have to worry in some sense about the slippery slope of deciding that some people need to be fully or mostly locked away by private business from the machinery of speaking their mind.
It happens that the text of the first amendment applies only to the government (and, in this case, Sinclair is working so hand-in-glove with the actual fascist government that it hardly matters anyway). But it doesn't mean that the principle of free speech stops outside Washington, DC. It applies on Substack, it applies on Lemmy, it applies on cable TV, in general there's a virtue in respecting people's ability to say their stuff (within certain baseline limits) without deciding for them whether the opinion they want to say is acceptable to you.
I don't think the situations are equivalent of course, or even close to. Substack banning Nazis might arguably be within the parameters of just safeguarding us all from the paradox of tolerance and fine. Sinclair banning Kimmel is much worse than that, and it's a quasi-governmental decision they're upholding anyway, it's not just a private business decision. The point I'm trying to make though is "it's a private business so they can censor whoever they want" isn't really the rhetorical slam-dunk that some people seem to feel like it should be, and this is a good situation to point to for why that's sometimes an important principle.
Bring on the shouting now, I guess
You probably got shouted at in the past because you were wrong then, just as you are now.
Free speech applies only to the government not interfering with your speech for good reason: the government should not stifle speech (with limits regarding shouting fire, or compelling violence 'kill that guy!'). If a person hosting a forum or (via owning a business) talk show or tiny Lemmy instance decides they don't want statements against their beliefs on the platform, its their free speech being exercised by removing it or placing rules stating "no nazi talk" on their service.
If free speech applies to private businesses and they are forced by the government to host all opinions then it becomes compelled speech. "You must host Nazis rhetoric on your message board, by order of the government, you cannot infringe on an individual's free speech". It becomes a paradox, free speech of the individual overrules free speech of the hosting individual or group.
The example you're using here is particularly backwards - because the FCC (the government) is pushing to have pro-Alt-right (pro Charlie Kirk) messaging pushed on all privately owned platforms, and punishing any platforms or individuals who disagree. They are compelling speech. That is the antithesis of free speech, yet you somehow see it as, "look, Sinclair banning Kimmel is the same as Nazis being banned from Substack," and they are actually not the same at all when you look at context.
In addition, if your platform hosts hate speech (Nazis, alt-right fascists, etc) then congrats - your platform is not a 'free speech haven', it's just a fascist platform. Look at 4chan, 8chan, 8kun, even Twitter - once the site runners decide it's ok to keep fascist content up, they become fascist / white supremacist platforms. If site owners don't want that to happen to their site, they moderate and ban and post rules - their free speech but your argument is that this is a bad thing and they should instead host all opinions?
Completely agree, that would be terrible. That's not what I am talking about.
I actually went further than saying they're "not the same," I said they're not even equivalent.
Glad to hear we agree on so many things. Including among other things the horror of the FCC going around and ordering people to remove speech on this topic. If only I'd mentioned that in some way.
You're wrong in the above statements. It is a slam dunk. The situation with Kimmel and the FCC and Sinclair is a counterpoint to your argument, not backing. You don't wanna see if that way. Thats fine 🤷🏻
Let me ask you a question: The behavior of Sinclair before this happened, when they were just buying up local TV stations and corrupting them with propaganda ("this is extremely dangerous to our democracy"), was that fine? Because they're a private company, and free speech? The government wasn't involved in that.
Was Apple TV cancelling Jon Stewart's podcast because he criticized China fine? I don't think the government told them to do that, that was just a private business doing private business things.
I'm not asking if those things were legal, I'm asking if you think there was nothing of concern about them.
You're acknowledgeing and simultaneously ignoring the main point, in that the Federal Communications Commission threatened ABC's license over this. This is quite literally a 1st amendment/gov't censorship issue - not a platform simply enforcing their often shitty ToS.
And the main idea about pressuring these large platforms in the past about moderating and/or removing certain speech, was that the types of speech that folks were advocating to have removed was speech that quite often led to real-world violence when it was able to propagate en masse.
You can also see the same ideas here on Lemmy. Several of the servers that are most prolific in their spread of hate speech have been de-federated from most of the rest of the servers.
There are plenty of authors, journalists and anti-fascist researchers over these last ten years who've had the unfortunate job of wading neck-deep into the online platforms that DO allow that kind of speech so that they can document and track how those fascist ideals spread, and who is spreading them. THEY are typically the ones screaming the loudest about the need for some form of community based moderation and/or censorship of certain ideas.
Search for "hand-in-glove".
Okay, so reddit was right to frenetically remove everyone talking about Luigi, right? Lemmy.world too? Just bring up a connection to real-world violence (which connection is also applied to pro-Palestinian activists, BLM protestors, all sorts of people) and then it becomes okay to pull their hosting / delete their comment?
I mean there are cases where I agree with you. Everyone can make their decision about where the lines are, that's the wonder of being a private company or whatever, and this is part of what I was quickly glossing over when I said "within certain baseline limits." Generally though, the principle is that whoever has the money and is in charge of the government is going to be the one deciding what is "violence" and what is "a counter-terrorism operation" or whatever distinction, so it's usually a lot safer to say that people can just talk even if someone who's in charge of pulling the plug or not feels like it's unsafe and dangerous what they are saying.
Citation? I'd be interested to read about it.
(I mean certainly that's not true now. They are not screaming louder than the government is screaming about needing to fire or deplatform anyone who talked about Charlie Kirk the wrong way. I do get what you meant though.)