Disney and ABC walked into federal court this week demanding a judge protect them from the Trump administration — arguing the FCC is running a retaliatory campaign against their broadcast licenses because the White House dislikes what they air. It is a serious First Amendment claim. It is also being made simultaneously with an argument, in a separate FCC docket, that The View is functionally identical to Meet the Press.
Both things cannot be true at once.
The FCC, under Chairman Brendan Carr, ordered early license renewal reviews for Disney’s eight owned-and-operated ABC stations in April — the first such action in more than 50 years. The timing followed a dust-up over Jimmy Kimmel mocking Melania Trump, and landed on top of an existing FCC probe into Disney’s DEI practices. ABC’s 45-page lawsuit, filed before U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan, calls it a retaliatory campaign against protected speech and asks for a temporary restraining order.
At the same time, Disney’s lawyers have spent months arguing in a separate FCC docket that The View — a daytime opinion panel anchored by Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg — qualifies for the “bona fide news interview” exemption to the federal equal time rule. That exemption, written into law in 1959, lets stations host one candidate without owing every rival candidate equal minutes. The catch: the programming has to actually function as journalism.
A NewsBusters count of The View’s full 29th season found 87 liberal guests against 5 conservative ones — a 95-to-5 ratio. The year before was worse: 128 liberal guests, 2 conservative, better than 98 percent one-sided. One of those two conservative bookings only happened because Marjorie Taylor Greene was feuding with her own party that week.
That is not a rounding error. That is a programming decision made deliberately, year after year, by a staff that knows exactly what it is producing.
Co-host Ana Navarro told her audience on air earlier this year to “vote Democrat.” ABC is now asking a federal agency to treat that same program as a neutral news broadcast.
Here is the reality Washington’s media class refuses to say plainly: both sides can be wrong at once. The FCC ordering accelerated license reviews because a president dislikes a late-night comedian’s jokes is exactly the kind of government content-based pressure the First Amendment was designed to stop. That is a real concern, and conservatives who forget it when the target is a network they dislike are making a mistake they will regret.
But ABC’s position is equally dishonest. A program booking political guests at a 95-to-5 liberal ratio is not a discussion. It is a caucus meeting with commercial breaks. Free speech protects ABC’s right to run an all-left-wing panel every weekday morning. It does not entitle ABC to call that panel a news program when the equal time rule is inconvenient, and a protected editorial product when the FCC comes knocking.
Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro vowed this week that ABC “won’t be told how to run” its business. He is right that government does not get to dictate editorial content. He is wrong to pretend The View is journalism. The American public deserves honesty from both the FCC and the network — and right now it is getting spin from both directions.
Hellbound and Down 