Jimmy Kimmel Suspension and the Fight for Free Speech

Hollywoodland News feels the need to address the Jimmy Kimmel suspension as well as other topics in the news cycle. HLN was built on the belief that the real, uncomfortable, messy stories deserve to be told. That means telling the truth even when it’s controversial but it also means being responsible about what we put into the world.

HLN hasn’t published a piece on the killing of Charlie Kirk. We haven’t written about lynchings either. All of this is done with intention and purpose. We are not in the business of creating trauma. We are in the business of healing and learning. HLN was never meant to be a platform for pain tourism or a place to sensationalize violence.

And I’ll be honest, this whole news cycle from the past week has hit me hard. No one should have to witness a public execution. No one should have to process that in real time. The fact that this is the world we live in, where death can be broadcast, debated and politicized shakes me to my core. And it’s not just here. I think about Palestine, where children are killed and we are shielded from their faces, their names, their humanity. We pick and choose which pain is “newsworthy,” which deaths deserve coverage, which victims are framed as innocent and which are dismissed as inevitable.

It shouldn’t be this way. Pain is not a competition. The choice shouldn’t be between covering every tragedy or covering none. We have to put out into the world the kind of world we want to see, one that mourns loss without glorifying it, one that bears witness without turning trauma into entertainment.

And yet, even with all that pain, I will always defend the right to speak about it. Because silencing voices, even the ones we don’t like, is not the answer.

Jimmy Kimmel made comments about the “MAGA gang” using Kirk’s killing to score political points. Within hours, FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatened ABC affiliates, the very affiliates whose licenses his agency controls, to pull the show. Nexstar, which just so happens to have a $6.2 billion merger deal pending before the FCC, immediately announced it wouldn’t carry Jimmy Kimmel Live! And then ABC did exactly what the Trump administration wanted: suspended Kimmel “indefinitely.”

This is not a network making an independent editorial decision. This is what happens when the state leans on private companies until they fold. This is the kind of tactic used by modern autocrats like Orbán in Hungary, or Putin in Russia, to force media into submission.

The ACLU agrees. Christopher Anders, director of the ACLU’s Democracy and Technology Division, said:

“Jimmy Kimmel is the latest target of the Trump administration’s unconstitutional plan to silence its critics and control what the American people watch and read. … This is beyond McCarthyism. … The Trump administration’s actions, paired with ABC’s capitulation, represent a grave threat to our First Amendment freedoms.”

And here’s what makes this even more dangerous: this same administration is labeling “antifa” a terrorist organization, despite the fact that antifa is not an organization at all. It’s a decentralized ideology with no formal membership, no leadership and no national structure. There isn’t even a legal mechanism to designate a purely domestic group as a terrorist organization. Basically this is how we criminalize political expression and dissent.

So let’s be real: this isn’t about protecting public safety or keeping “dangerous ideas” off the air. This is about using the power of the state to punish speech that those in power don’t like and daring anyone else to challenge them.

And that’s what this moment is really about. Not whether you liked Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension or jokes, or whether you agreed with Kirk, or whether you think either of them represent your politics. It’s about whether we’re okay with living in a country where the government can threaten your livelihood, or your broadcast license, for saying something they don’t like.

HLN will always choose truth. We will always choose speech over silence not because we always agree with what’s being said, but because democracy cannot survive without it.

Silence may feel safe. But safe is not free.