Lessons from Jimmy Kimmel: The Media Don’t Have to Be Controlled by the Rich

There are alternatives, if we try thinking

Like every other sane person, I was outraged at seeing Jimmy Kimmel getting fired because he was making fun of Donald Trump. (Spare me the crap about ridiculing the killing of Charlie Kirk. He unambiguously condemned the killing and expressed sympathy for Mr. Kirk’s family and friends, something Trump and most Republicans have been unable to do for the victims of right-wing violence.)

Kimmel’s sin, like that of his previously fired friend Stephan Colbert, was making fun of Donald Trump. Trump has directly said that he will order the head of the Federal Communications Commission, a formerly independent agency, to take away the broadcast licenses from stations that carry comedians making fun of him. Trump might be immensely obese, but he has very thin skin.

The threat of taking away licenses is a bit complicated because the networks don’t directly hold the broadcast licenses, individual stations that air network broadcasts do. If the FCC were following normal procedures, it would take considerable time and effort to strip these stations of their licenses.

And if the FCC was actually following the law in the process, it’s not clear it would be even able to do it. After all, having a comedian make fun of the president for a few hours a week would not ordinarily be sufficient to establish the case that the station wasn’t broadcasting in the public interest. But Donald Trump could probably declare another national emergency (people are making fun of him) and use it as the basis for overriding the normal procedures.

But ABC wasn’t prepared to go the full legal route. Nexstar, which owns 32 ABC affiliate stations, announced that it was no longer going to carry Kimmel’s show. Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns even more affiliates, also objected to Kimmel. Both media companies will need regulatory approval from Trump’s FCC for various expansion plans, as does ABC’s parent company, Disney. This made dumping Kimmel an easy call.

Losing late night comedians is not the only loss from this crackdown on freedom of the press. CBS was recently taken over by David Ellison, the right-wing son of centi-billionaire Larry Ellison, the right-winger who will now be controlling TikTok under the deal crafted by Donald Trump, in addition to CNN. We already have Mega MAGA whack job Elon Musk controlling Twitter (now “X”), and newly converted MAGA groupie Mark Zuckerberg controlling Facebook and Instagram. The prospects for independent media in the U.S. don’t look very good just now.

People should not completely despair, we do have progressive podcasts, such as Pod Save America and MeidasTouch that draw millions of viewers each week. Many others have large followings. By comparison, Kimmel’s audience on ABC was down to just 1.1 million a night. Viewership of the network new shows is also tumbling into the low single-digit millions. By comparison, Walter Conkrite used to get almost 30 million viewers every night in a country half as large as it is now. So, there is still some basis for hope.

But the fact that so many on the left apparently felt that media outlets owned and controlled by rich people, could be trusted to give us unbiased information, showed an incredible lack of foresight and has led to a disaster of major proportions. This did not have to happen.

It was, and hopefully still is, possible to build up an alternative media structure that does not rely on the goodwill of the rich. We could look to establish a system of individual tax credits, similar to what exists now with the charitable contribution tax deduction, for supporting journalism. The idea is that everyone would have a sum of money (e.g. $100) to support the journalistic outlet of their choice.

This sort of tax credit system could support a vast amount of alternative media. The arithmetic is straightforward. If 200 million people used a $100 credit, this could fund $20 billion a year of journalistic work. That could pay a huge number of people to research, write, and present news stories, and to make jokes about the president.

Not all of what would be supported by this money would be good and not all of it would be progressive. The MAGA folks would have their tax credits too and they could use them to give us even more Fox News. But the point is that there should be enough money on the table to support solid reporting that will ensure real news will be available to those who want it.

And hopefully, some of the people getting the credits will be a bit more creative than our current crop of liberal politicians and pundits and could actually make their presentations interesting. This could allow progressive views to reach a wider audience. And the best part is that no billionaire could shut it down because they were offended by something someone said.

It would have been great if this sort of structure had been put in place decades ago, but next to no one on the left felt that media mattered. It isn’t too late to push forward with this sort of system now, clearly not at the national level, but it certainly can be done at the state or local level. In fact, Katie Wilson, the leading candidate for mayor of Seattle, is a big proponent of this sort of system for the city.

Anyhow, we can’t change what we did or didn’t do in the past, but we can choose the best route for going forward. We need to take the media seriously and that means not trusting civic minded billionaires but rather democratizing the ownership of the media. The tax credit system is a possible plan, if there are better ones, let’s get them on the table.