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The country's chief broadcast regulator has made unprecedented threats against the Walt Disney Company's television properties. He's threatening all the licenses that Disney holds to run the eight ABC TV stations that it owns. Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, has been slamming Disney and ABC on a variety of grounds. A lot of them have to do with coverage and criticism of President Trump. Now Disney is standing up to the government's actions. NPR's David Folkenflik has this story.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: ABC and its parent company, Disney, may seem like unlikely avatars of free speech in Trump's second term. Just weeks before Trump was inaugurated anew, ABC settled a defamation case that he had brought as a private citizen over misstatements about him by anchor George Stephanopoulos. This, despite what many legal observers called favorable odds for ABC. Last fall, ABC yanked late-night host Jimmy Kimmel from the air after Trump called for his firing. So did Trump's chief broadcast regulator.
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BRENDAN CARR: We can do this the easy way or the hard way.
FOLKENFLIK: That was FCC chair, Brendan Carr, on right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson's show in September.
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CARR: These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action on Kimmel, or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.
FOLKENFLIK: Kimmel returned after an outcry from ABC viewers and Disney's digital subscribers. Eight months later, Disney and ABC are stripping bark off trees, at least by bureaucratic standards. In one case, they objected to the FCC's investigation of the talk show "The View," alleging the agency was chilling its free speech. In response to the actions on the licenses, ABC and Disney said those actions were unlawful, arbitrary and unconstitutional - all that just in the first sentence of their filing.
LISA STARK: I was surprised when I saw ABC standing up for its rights, standing up for the First Amendment.
FOLKENFLIK: This is Lisa Stark. She was a Washington correspondent for ABC News for more than 20 years.
STARK: I had seen no indication that the network was in a fighting mood.
FOLKENFLIK: Last fall, Stark helped to arrange a petition signed by 200 former ABC journalists, urging then-Disney CEO Bob Iger to stand up to Carr. They heard nothing back.
STARK: So I was thrilled when I saw that Disney and ABC decided enough is enough and drew a line in the sand and said, we have to fight back. The FCC is being weaponized, and we need to do something about it.
FOLKENFLIK: Stark argues that Disney didn't gain any advantage by settling Trump's lawsuit or by suspending Kimmel. Both actions had been cheered by the FCC's Carr. Carr tells NPR his actions toward the ABC stations have nothing to do with the free speech questions, his past remarks notwithstanding. Carr says he is defining and defending the public interest, a somewhat vague obligation for broadcast license holders that Congress gives the FCC the authority to enforce. Carr says his predecessors, both Republican and Democrat, have failed to exercise that authority muscularly, and Carr has embraced the president's priorities.
CARR: Well, one thing President Trump was clear about, very early on in the administration, is he was calling for the end of these invidious forms of DEI discrimination. He had executive orders out there.
FOLKENFLIK: The review, Carr says, is over Disney's diversity, equity and inclusion policies, and he says he finds Disney's response underwhelming.
CARR: This finding has a lot in it. Some of it's interesting. A lot of it is handwaving.
FOLKENFLIK: Disney and ABC did not comment for this story. ABC owns stations in the nation's six largest markets. They are a key driver of the bottom line for Disney's television division, and some of them weren't up for review for years. Again, FCC Chair Brendan Carr.
CARR: In some ways, I think maybe they want to have the benefits of a broadcast license without the burden of the public interest obligations that come with it, but those two things go hand-in-glove.
FOLKENFLIK: One sign that Disney is girding for a court battle, among its lead attorneys is a conservative Republican, Paul Clement. He is the former solicitor general under President George W. Bush and one of the most prolific legal advocates before the U.S. Supreme Court. David Folkenflik, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF ZAYN SONG, "STARDUST") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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