AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, broadcasting today from Toronto, Canada. Juan González is in Chicago.

As President Trump continues to attack media organizations and journalists, we turn now to look at the Federal Communications Commission targeting of Disney, the parent company of ABC. Last week, FCC Chair Brendan Carr ordered a review of eight local ABC TV licenses. They were not scheduled to be up for renewal until 2028, but Carr ordered an early review, which could lead to ABC being stripped of the licenses.

Carr made the announcement one day after President Trump and first lady Melania Trump publicly demanded ABC fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel once again, this time over a joke he made about them. Carr has denied there was a connection, citing a separate FCC investigation into Disney’s DEI — that’s diversity, equity and inclusion — policies. Carr was questioned by reporters last week.

DAVID SHEPARDSON: Was there any connection? Did you feel any pressure? Was the timing at all, you know, as a result of White House pressure, what happened on Saturday night?

BRENDAN CARR: No, this was a decision that we made inside this building based on where we were in the enforcement matter. There was no pressure from the outside. There was no suggestion from the outside. There was no call for agency action from the outside. This was based on our assessment of where we were.

With respect to President Trump, obviously, he has every right, First Amendment right, to express his position on this. One of the great things about President Trump is he’s very transparent. He has told publicly his position. He has every right to make the decisions that he’s made, to make the public calls that he’s made. Same with the first lady. And there’s a lot of people out there that agree with them.

DAVID SHEPARDSON: And to just — can I ask, on — and then, will the Jimmy Kimmel, will that all or any speech issues be part of this review? Is it solely restricted to DEI, the license, the early license reviews?

BRENDAN CARR: Our DEI review is going to continue and is going to be part of that. We are calling their licenses in for early renewal. I think they have eight station licenses. Once they make that filing, then anybody can file petitions to deny. We can’t control what claims they make in their petitions to deny. And we’ll take a look at all of that.

AMY GOODMAN: Last September, ABC briefly suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s show after Brendan Carr threatened to take action over remarks Kimmel made following the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

BRENDAN CARR: You know, when you look at the conduct that has taken place by Jimmy Kimmel, it appears to be some of the sickest conduct possible. … I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.

AMY GOODMAN: The FCC currently has just three commissioners. The sole Democrat on the FCC, Anna Gomez, spoke at a hearing last week and criticized Carr’s latest move targeting ABC.

ANNA GOMEZ: Calling an early renewal of a broadcast license is a rare step. It happens only as a last resort and after evidence of clear abuse of the trust surrounding that license or a blatant violation of our rules. It has not happened in decades. And the targeting of a group of stations to punish a parent company has never happened in history. The irony is not lost on anyone. A joke made about an event meant to honor the First Amendment is now being used as a justification to curtail it.

AMY GOODMAN: That was FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez speaking last week. She joins us now from Washington, D.C., to talk about the ABC probe, the proposed megamerger between Paramount and Time Warner Discovery — if approved, it would mean CNN, CBS, HBO and more would all be under one roof — and more.

Commissioner Gomez, thanks so much for being with us. Start off by talking about what’s at stake with the FCC Chair Carr’s threat to pull the licenses from ABC stations over Jimmy Kimmel once again.

ANNA GOMEZ: Yes. Good morning. It’s good to be with you today.

What the FCC has done is the most offensive assault on the First Amendment so far by this FCC. It is going after, in an unprecedented fashion, a network program by threatening the licenses of the local broadcasters of that network. It’s bound to fail, if in fact Disney pushes back. And I’m glad to see that, in fact, they are, because if this actually gets reviewed by a court, it will be a long-needed rebuke of the abuses of this FCC and this administration of the First Amendment.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Commissioner, currently, stations have 10 years, once they’re granted a license, before it has to be renewed. This was actually extended by many years in previous Republican administrations, after citizen groups began to challenge the licenses of many stations around the country in the ’60s and the ’70s. How unusual is it, this idea of even before the period of a license is up for renewal, that the government steps in?

ANNA GOMEZ: It’s extremely unusual. The last time that the agency advanced the period for a renewal of a license was over a half a century ago, and most certainly has never been done where eight of the entirely eight local broadcast stations owned by the network are brought up for renewal. And to be clear, the earliest renewal that was due was in 2028, the latest was in 2031. And these are actually eight-year licenses. So, this is extremely unprecedented.

And it just shows you what a pretext it is for going after Disney because Disney has so far refused to bend the knee to this administration’s demands that it fire a comedian and that it change its content so that this administration isn’t upset by whatever coverage it’s getting by this network. It’s also meant, by the way, as a threat to other broadcasters, basically putting them on notice that if they upset this administration, they, too, will be dragged before the FCC in an early renewal process.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Could you tell us whether you’ve had conversations with the chair of the FCC, Brendan Carr, about this, to what degree you feel he is basically doing whatever President Trump wants?

ANNA GOMEZ: Well, this administration is using any point of leverage that it has to go after its critics, whether it’s the FCC, whether it’s the FTC, whether it’s the Department of Justice, whether it’s the Department of Defense. It is trying everything it can to ensure that it gets coverage that it likes. And I have been very vocal in my criticism of this and, frankly, in alerting everyone, the public, the corporations, the broadcasters, reporters, that this is a serious issue for our democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: I think it’s important to note that Trump’s FCC pick, Brendan Carr, the chair of the FCC, wrote Project 2025’s chapter on the FCC. And I want to go from what we’re talking about with ABC and Kimmel and ABC being threatened with losing — stations losing their licenses, to megamergers.

More than a hundred of Hollywood’s most prominent writers, directors and actors, and thousands of people, overall, related to Hollywood, producers, directors, actors, signed an open letter voicing their opposition to the proposed merger of Paramount — that was Paramount Skydance — and Warner Bros. Discovery. The letter reads, in part, quote, “The integrity, independence, and diversity of our industry would be grievously compromised. Competition is essential for a healthy economy and a healthy democracy. So is thoughtful regulation and enforcement,” unquote.

Paramount Skydance announced its intended $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery earlier this year, after Netflix dropped its bid after meeting at the White House. Paramount’s offer still requires regulatory approval in the U.S. and Europe. If completed, it would create the largest media conglomerate in U.S. history, spanning news, sports, movies, video games, theme parks and more, all controlled by Paramount Chair David Ellison, a vocal supporter of President Trump, as is his father, the billionaire Larry Ellison. So, if Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery were approved, it would put CBS, owned by Paramount, together with HBO, CNN and other, what they call, media properties. Can you talk about the significance of this, the mass opposition to this, Commissioner Gomez?

ANNA GOMEZ: Sure. One thing that’s important to note is that the FCC actually does not have a part in approving the actual merger itself, but it does have a role in approving the — or not approving — and reviewing the foreign ownership that is implicated by this transaction. And I’ll get to that in a minute.

Traditionally, what the FCC worries about when it comes to media and its regulations are three things: competition, localism — in other words, serving your local communities — and viewpoint diversity. And those principles are very important, because we want to make sure that every viewer, every listener has the ability to see themselves in whatever choice they make in their broadcasts.

And the harm that we have when we have these mega-consolidations, say, of local broadcasters, like we just saw with the Nexstar-Tegna transaction — which, by the way, is under court review right now — is that you lose that viewpoint diversity, because all of a sudden every station that you’re looking at has the same content, because it’s owned by the same corporate parent. And that is, in fact, harmful for localism, for civic engagement, even for getting information about high school sports. And, you know, we lose that benefit.

We also don’t want to reach a point where we just become a nation that gets content dictated to it by this administration. When Paramount was bought by Skydance, in fact, the commission did approve that. And one of the things that this commission imposed on that transaction was a requirement that they have a truth arbiter or an ombudsperson that would field complaints about bias in the content of the network. That is dangerous, because we don’t want to have a viewing public that is only seeing what this administration wants them to see.

Now, with regard to the foreign ownership of the — in the Paramount-Warner Bros. transaction, I’m concerned that this FCC ensured that it actually carefully reviews what is being asked for here. Paramount has asked for the commission to approve up to 100% indirect foreign ownership in this transaction. Now, the foreign ownership we’re talking about here is sovereign wealth funds by foreign countries, and 10% by a Chinese company that is essentially controlled by China. I think there is a real issue here that we need to be concerned about, if what this results in is a chilling effect in what content that viewers see because of any fear of upsetting these foreign governments in whatever content is being shown. And we’ve seen that already happen in, for example, the nixing of documentaries about reporters that have been murdered, like, you know, the Khashoggi murder. So, this is a serious issue for the FCC, and we need to really seriously consider it.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Commissioner Gomez, I’d like you to briefly comment on another major merger, between Nexstar Media Group and Tegna, two of the largest local broadcast station owners in the U.S. The Trump administration approved the merger after your FCC waived rules limiting any company from owning stations that together reach more than 39% of U.S. households. Could you talk about that merger and the fact that Nexstar Media Group’s owners are known as very conservative folks who have aligned themselves with the Trump administration in the past?

ANNA GOMEZ: Yes. So, much like the foreign ownership, by the way, there’s a statutory cap in how much a single owner can own in terms of local broadcasts — broadcasters. That ownership cap is 39% of viewing households in this country. The Nexstar-Tegna merger will lead to a transaction that will reach 80% of viewing households of this country.

And this goes back to my point about viewpoint diversity. What we have seen in the past, we’ve seen mergers in the past of local broadcasters, and what that leads to is a reduction of the journalism and of the local content, because what these transactions are seeking are synergies. Synergies are just another word for layoffs. And so, what will happen is you will get the same content shown at all of these broadcasters in these individual markets, and you will no longer have a diversity of viewpoints being shown. And as you note, this Nexstar has been very sympathetic to this administration, probably for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that they want these transactions to be approved. But that’s a problem, because we don’t want to have our media content fed to us by one person.

AMY GOODMAN: And very significant in this, Commissioner Gomez, is that three Republican attorneys general, including Kris Kobach of Kansas, have joined with eight Democratic attorney generals in filing suit over this or challenging this legally.

ANNA GOMEZ: Yeah, and important — that’s the other thing I didn’t mention — is, one of the issues with having so much power concentrated in one corporation is that it will actually lead to increased cable rates and streaming rates for the viewers themselves, because it changes the balance of negotiating power. And that is a large reason why these attorney generals, both on Republicans and Democrats, are challenging the transaction.

And one of the things that we saw, by the way, which I found very disturbing about this transaction, is that despite the magnitude of this transaction, and despite the fact that it was unlawful for the FCC to actually approve it, it was not voted on by the commission. And that is done for a couple of reasons. One, it’s less complicated if I cannot speak out publicly about something that’s being done as a backdoor deal, and it was rushed through in order to avoid this very judicial review. All of the approvals — the DOJ approval, the FCC approval — happened very quickly, in one day, and the transaction closed in 10 minutes after the FCC approved it. Clearly, this was coordinated so that this billionaire buddy bypass that this administration seems to have for the corporations it supports could get this done and hopefully avoid this judicial review. Apparently, it didn’t work.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Anna Gomez, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Federal Communications commissioner, the only Democrat of the three that are left. The chair is a Trump pick, Brendan Carr.

Next up, we look at a funding crisis facing community media. It’s public access TV, often overlooked when talking about public media in the United States. We’ll talk to the heads of Access Sacramento in California and BronxNet, the poorest county in New York state, the Bronx, and how they serve their communities. What’s at stake? Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: Honduran musician Karla Lara, performing in our Democracy Now! studio.