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Disney has accused Donald Trump’s media regulator of attempting to “sit in an editor’s chair” as it pushes back on an investigation into The View, the longtime ABC talk show.
Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission chair, has launched two probes into Disney in recent months — one centred on whether The View had violated rules requiring broadcasters to give equal airtime to opposing political candidates.
“The First Amendment does not permit the government to sit in an editor’s chair. Yet that is the seat the Commission now proposes to take — deciding which broadcast programmes qualify as legitimate news and, for those it finds wanting, compelling them to surrender their airtime to guests they never chose to feature,” Disney said in a filing on Tuesday.
The media giant, which owns ABC and The View, has confronted the Trump administration head-on this year. In response to Carr’s investigation, Disney aired advertisements on ABC calling on viewers to show their support via comments on the FCC website. More than 76,000 people submitted responses during the public comment period, which ended on Monday.
“Today, the programme in the Commission’s sights is The View. The principle in the balance is far larger: whether a federal regulator may override a broadcaster’s editorial judgment about whom to interview — a judgment the Constitution commits to broadcasters and their audiences, not to the state,” Disney warned on Tuesday in a filing signed by lawyer Paul Clement.
The stand-off between one of America’s most prominent companies and The White House comes as Trump has escalated his battle with the US media in his second term, suing several networks and newspapers.
The FCC’s probe into The View centres around whether the show qualifies as a news broadcast, which exempts it from equal-time requirements under US law. The show, which has been on air since the 1990s, received that exemption decades ago.
“Nothing about The View that the law cares about has changed since the Commission last answered that question more than two decades ago,” Disney said on Tuesday. “What has changed is not the programme but the political climate around it.”
The FCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Carr has called the ABC ads a “campaign of misinformation”.
Disney previously took a softer stance towards the Trump administration. In 2024, it agreed to pay $15mn to settle a lawsuit brought by the president against ABC.
Source:
www.ft.com
