Pam Bondi should know the law. Yet when the U.S. Attorney General recently declared she wanted to prosecute “hate speech,” she proved she didn’t. Hate speech is protected in America. That’s not an opinion, it’s constitutional law.

Then she tried to walk it back and landed herself in a bigger mess.

Brendan Carr, on the other hand, does know better. So when the chair of the FCC told ABC’s affiliates they could either pull Jimmy Kimmel “the easy way” or face an FCC investigation “the hard way” for the comedian’s remarks following the death of Charlie Kirk, even Ted Cruz slapped him for acting in a manner he called “unbelievably dangerous.”

If there’s one good thing to come out of all this, it’s this: people from both sides of the aisle are coming together to denounce Bondi and Carr. In a weird way, that’s progress for America right now.

Carr’s extremely caffeinated approach to policing the airwaves has landed him plenty of airtime and headlines, and maybe that’s what he wants. The more news coverage he receives, the more powerful he’s perceived. Here’s the reality check: the FCC’s reach extends only to over-the-air broadcasters. Nothing more. It’s an incredibly small slice of today’s media landscape, massively dwarfed by the global reach of streaming. Carr can go after ABC, but not Netflix. Think about that.

While it’s also true that broadcasting companies need FCC approval for their business plans to buy and sell, here’s the part of the equation that’s missing: there are no bidding wars for these companies. If they can find one interested buyer, they consider themselves lucky. The question becomes: would today’s FCC stand in the way of a business deal that, if it didn’t go through, would cause damage to one or both companies? History pointedly says no.

Now consider this: the media outlets Carr does go after are the only ones that actually have a mandate to serve the public interest. To diminish—or advocate for their demise (public media, really?)—not only means the internet, cable and satellite sources will be able to flourish, promoting whatever they want without regulatory oversight, but it also means Carr is, in fact, making himself even more irrelevant. For the record, he did try to go after the tech bros and attack Section 230, and found out the hard way how limited his power actually is. Perhaps all this bluster is to make us forget that part of his story?

Here’s the truth Carr and Bondi ignore: it’s not their job to decide what the public should hear. It’s the public’s. Don’t like Kimmel? Don’t watch. If enough people agree, ratings fall, advertisers pull their dollars, and the show disappears. That’s how democracy works in a free market.

Whether you like Kimmel or not, his return to the airwaves blew the roof off his over-the-air ratings (over 6 million when his typical pull was about 1.5 million) and his streaming numbers are north of 25 million. His suspension cost Disney subscribers and its stock took a hit of about $4 billion. Now shareholders want answers. This is people power in action.

What Jimmy Kimmel just showed Brendan Carr is that media companies can no longer hide behind the idea that bowing to the FCC is in their best interest.

The people decide what survives in the media landscape—and that freedom to choose is what gives the American public its power.

-Jaci Clement, CEO/Executive Director, Fair Media Council

Take a Listen: More on the Topic

n this episode of FMC Fast Chat, we talk with First Amendment scholar Clay Calvert, Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida, on the line between offensive comedy and unprotected speech, and how far the FCC can go in policing broadcasters.

Take a listen: Discussing Jimmy Kimmel, the FCC & Free Speech: Calvert on FMC Fast Chat with Jaci Clement | American Enterprise Institute – AEI