By JAZMIN GOMEZ
In an attempt to solidify their political credibility, conservatives curate disinformation and misinformation on media platforms to spread their ideologies to the masses and gather support based on ignorance. Specifically, groups possessing right-leaning ideologies use these platforms to warp the truth, creating hysteria and promoting harmful doctrine.
This came to the forefront when the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers utilized Twitter and their own encrypted chats to communicate anti-Black and anti-immigrant hate online, eventually leading to violent conflicts like the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Or when a far-right social media platform, Gab, produced Covid-19 misinformation. Randy Watt, an avid participant of Covid myths on Gab, died of the virus after not pursuing proper care, according to a New York Times article.
Social media becomes a political weapon of conservatives to spread self-serving ideologies that commonly rely on false or discriminatory information. But in 2025, the far-right, empowered by the re-election of President Donald Trump, has become dissatisfied with promoting harm through social media, so attacks on other media forms ensue.
The indefinite suspension and later return of the broadcast “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” exemplifies the wage on the first amendment by the right. Censoring political satire for making rather moderate comments concerning Charlie Kirk’s assassination seems like an attempt by the right to censor anything they deem unsavory for their political advancement.
Brendan Carr, chairman and Trump appointee of the Federal Communications Commission, avoided legalities by bullying ABC into suspending Kimmel’s show, saying, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” according to NPR. “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.”
Using intimidation tactics to essentially force ABC into pulling the show exposes Carr’s far-right agenda. “If you are going to have a license from the FCC, we expect you to broadly serve the public interest,” Carr said to Fox News presenter Sean Hannity. Carr defines the public as the conservative interest, attacking anything he deems as slights against the Trump agenda, including launching formal investigations against major broadcasting networks with Fox as the exception, according to NPR.
Broadcast networks PBS and NPR are under major heat from the FCC and the Trump administration. After losing their federal funding from an White House executive order on May 1 of this year for not providing “fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens” and to ensure “Federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage,” PBS and NPR released statements challenging the order.
NPR CEO and President Katherine Maher said in a statement, “The President’s order is an affront to the First Amendment rights of NPR.” Similarly, PBS CEO and President Paula Kerger said, “The President’s blatantly unlawful Executive Order threatens our ability to serve the American public with educational programming.”
These stand as major setbacks for both networks. Defunding these broadcasts means cutting staff and most notably local and rural stations that relied on the federal funding to stay alive, as 60% of PBS audiences live in rural communities, according to PBS’s 2025 fact sheet. Cutting access to these stations means a loss of a news source for many people. The public deserves access to reputable news to form their own political and social opinions. Editorial access gives the public intellectual autonomy.
Once media bias becomes a buzz word, the lines between bias and objectivity becomes blurred. The far-right feels compelled to control the narrative through controlling the media the public digests, as a tactic to further their own political agenda and social ideologies. Kimmel’s suspension and broadcast defunding is a direct attack on the first amendment.
Featured image: KTVZ
Leave a Reply