ABC Sues FCC Over Threats to Broadcast Licenses In First Amendment Case — The Hollywood Reporter

RESOLVING THE LEDGER

ABC Sues FCC Over Threats to Broadcast Licenses In First Amendment Case — The Hollywood Reporter | AIPROPX

ABC is suing the Federal Communications Commission over the agency's efforts to challenge its broadcast licenses and the content of The View , saying that it is a free speech violation by the Trump administration.

The Disney -owned network filed suit against the FCC Tuesday in D.C. District Court, asking the court to stop the early broadcast license renewal proceedings, asking for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction.

"The consequences of the Administration's campaign against free speech reach well beyond ABC. If the Administration gets its way, the message to every media company in the country will be unmistakable: tell only the stories the Administration deems favorable, or face the coercive machinery of the federal government. In such a world, the press could in no way be described as free," the suit reads. Related Stories TV Witney Carson Answers Burning 'DWTS' Questions After Pregnancy Announcement, Chats 'Next Pro' Movies Hayden Panettiere and Michelle Trachtenberg's Deaths Have Fans Reminiscing About 'Ice Princess'

The FCC called ABC's eight broadcast licenses in for an early renewal earlier this year, which the network filed but "under protest." The renewal seemed to be aimed at parent company Disney's DEI policies, though the network noted that just before calling in the licenses, the administration had called for it to take action against late night host Jimmy Kimmel over a joke he made on his program.

"Until the day before that order was issued, the Commission had not called for a renewal application ahead of schedule in more than half a century. Nor had it ever demanded simultaneous early renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a single broadcast network — much less stations with the record of public service and award-winning journalism like these stations. In a contemporaneous interview, the Chairman did not mince words when explaining the Commission's decision to ramp up its pressure on ABC: 'If you didn't take us seriously, now you should,' the suit reads.

The FCC also launched a separate proceeding about The View , which it argued is not a "bona fide" news program and therefore was not exempt from FCC equal opportunity rules. ABC said in an earlier filing that the FCC "now appears poised to find that The View must provide equal opportunities to all legally qualified political candidates if it interviews one candidate on the show, which would represent a reversal of decades of agency precedent."

In the suit Tuesday, ABC said it has continued to respond to the FCC investigation including responding to more than 600 separate requests and producing more than 13,000 pages of documents across both investigations. But throughout the process, the network said it has still faced threats to its stations' licenses due to the content of the programming.

"The Commission's true target is not the stations' employment practices or their carriage of a single presidential address; it is the content of plaintiffs' programming — and thus their speech. Because the Commission cannot regulate that content directly, it has used its review of the stations' licenses as an instrument to the same end," the suit reads. "Because the Commission cannot regulate that content directly, it has used its review of the stations' licenses as an instrument to the same end." More to come.