A Free Speech about Free Speech

Despite government shutdown, FCC commissioner still coming to the Ole Miss campus

Despite the U.S. government shutdown, our event with Federal Communications Commissioner Anna Gomez is still on Thursday evening here at the University of Mississippi.

When I invited the commissioner to speak, we had no idea that the independent federal agency would burst into the headlines. The Trump-appointed chairman of the FCC, Republican Brendan Carr, in recent weeks, has sharply criticized political commentary on late-night shows, especially Jimmy Kimmel Live!, calling the host’s remarks about Charlie Kirk’s death “sick” and warning broadcasters that their FCC licenses depend on serving the “public interest.” He suggested that ABC and its affiliates could face license reviews or regulatory consequences: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

Carr’s remarks have triggered bipartisan backlash, with critics accusing him of unconstitutional “jawboning” and abusing FCC authority to chill speech, while even some Republicans warned such tactics could be turned against conservative outlets in the future.

Gomez, appointed by President Biden in 2023 and the FCC’s lone Democrat commissioner, has condemned Carr’s pressure campaign as an attack on the First Amendment and urged media companies to “stop capitulating” to government threats. She says the government lacks authority to yank licenses over disfavored political speech and calls the Kimmel suspension “the most alarming attack on free expression by our government in recent memory.”

We will ask Gomez to elaborate on this and I’ll put some questions to her on the FCC’s apparent willingness to lift the ownership caps for television and radio stations. That might improve efficiencies and save some struggling stations but will it promote local content and diversity in programming as proponents claim? Or will it make America’s airwaves even more homogenous with less local programming, as some critics predict?

If you cannot join us on campus in Oxford for this event, we’ll put online a video of the remarks on Friday.

If you’d like to support future free speech events by the Jordan Center, as well as our upcoming projects involving citizen journalism education — plus innovative experiments for 21st century digital media, click here or take a snap of this QR code.

Stay tuned!