May 1, 2026
NHMC Condemns FCC's Escalating Assault on Press Freedom — From Retaliating Against ABC to Rubber-Stamping the Nexstar-TEGNA Mega-Merger
The agency is simultaneously punishing speech it doesn't like and greenlighting the largest consolidation of local TV in American history
The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) today condemned the Federal Communications Commission's decision to order early broadcast license renewals for eight Disney-owned ABC stations in apparent retaliation for comments made by late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, a move that came just days after the agency approved the Nexstar-TEGNA merger, handing one company control over local television stations reaching nearly 80 percent of American households.
These actions reveal an FCC that has abandoned its mandate to serve the public interest. On one hand, the agency is weaponizing its licensing authority to punish constitutionally protected speech. On the other, it is dismantling the ownership safeguards Congress put in place to protect local media and the communities that depend on it.
The FCC's early license review of ABC's stations follows a joke by Kimmel last week during a monologue on his late-night show, a mock White House Correspondents' Dinner speech in which he called First Lady Melania Trump an "expectant widow." President Trump subsequently called for ABC to fire Kimmel, characterizing the joke as a "call to violence." Within days, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr ordered Disney to file license renewals for all eight of its owned-and-operated stations within 30 days.
Carr and his FCC’s track record is impossible to ignore. The same agency that has once again moved to threaten and penalize a network over a comedian's joke, recently rushed through an unpopular merger — with a California judge stopping the deal in part because of the FCC’s “unusual” approval process — that would gut local newsrooms, raise costs for consumers, and concentrate an unprecedented share of the nation's local television infrastructure under a single corporate owner, which is in direct violation of the congressionally mandated 39 percent national ownership cap.
"The FCC is telling the American people exactly who it works for and it isn't Americans," said Brenda Victoria Castillo, President and CEO of the National Hispanic Media Coalition. "Using the licensing process to retaliate against a late-night host's joke is a textbook First Amendment violation. And approving a merger that will devastate local newsrooms while Nexstar is already slashing jobs and reporting $1.56 billion in profit is an insult to every community that relies on local news. This agency has strayed far from its original purpose of regulating the broadcast industry, and is instead doing the bidding of those in power at the direct expense of the public interest. We will not stand by while the FCC turns broadcast licenses into tools of political punishment and corporate consolidation."
In December of last year, Lake Research Partners conducted a poll, commissioned by the NHMC and Defend the Press Campaign, that showed that the majority of Americans — Republican, Democratic, and Independent likely voters — were overwhelmingly and intensely opposed to the loosening of federal broadcast ownership rules and mergers that raise costs for consumers and give billionaires greater control over broadcasting and news.
"What we are witnessing is the FCC operating as an enforcement arm of the White House, not an independent regulatory agency," said Castillo. "Ordering a license review because a comedian told a joke the President didn't like is plain and simple retaliation. When you pair that with approving a merger that Congress explicitly wrote the law to prevent, you have an agency that is simultaneously chilling free speech and dismantling the local media ecosystem. Every broadcaster in America is now on notice: cross the administration, and your license is at risk. That is not how a free press survives."
NHMC leads the Defend the Press campaign and are calling on:
Members of Congress to immediately investigate the FCC's retaliatory use of the license renewal process and hold oversight hearings on the agency's approval of the Nexstar-TEGNA merger in violation of the statutory ownership cap.
State Attorneys General to remain strong in their challenge to the Nexstar-TEGNA merger as unlawful and anticompetitive.
Federal courts to review both the license action against ABC and the merger approval, and to enforce existing statutory protections for press freedom and media ownership limits.
An FCC that punishes speech it dislikes while enabling the corporate consolidation that hollows out local journalism is an agency in crisis. Local journalism is civic infrastructure. It is how communities stay informed, how voters make decisions, and how power is held accountable. These actions threaten all of it.
