LOS ANGELES, US: Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night television show has been taken off the air “indefinitely” after the host was criticized for comments about the motives behind the killing of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, US network ABC said.
The stunning decision to suspend one of the United States’ most popular and influential late-night shows comes as President Donald Trump has widened his legal attacks on media organizations that he accuses of bias against him.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live will be preempted indefinitely,” an ABC spokesperson told AFP, using a television industry term for when a show is replaced or removed from the schedule.
Kirk, a close ally of President Donald Trump, was shot dead last week during a speaking event on a Utah university campus.
Authorities said 22-year-old Tyler Robinson used a rifle to shoot Kirk with a single bullet to the neck from a rooftop. He was arrested and has been formally charged with his murder.
On Monday, Kimmel spoke about the shooting in his popular late-night show’s monologue.
“We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it,” said Kimmel.
“MAGA” refers to the president’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
The White House this week said it would be pursuing an alleged left-wing “domestic terror movement” in the wake of Kirk’s killing, prompting alarm that such a campaign could be used to silence political dissent.
ABC’s decision came shortly after Nexstar — one of the country’s biggest owners of ABC affiliate stations — said it would not broadcast “Jimmy Kimmel Live” for “the foreseeable future.”
In a statement, Nexstar broadcasting president Andrew Alford said the company “strongly objects” to Kimmel’s comments.
“Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located,” he said.
“Continuing to give Mr.Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue.”
Kimmel did not immediately comment, and representatives for the entertainer did not respond to AFP queries.
The decision to suspend Kimmel’s show comes as Trump has intensified his long-established hostility toward the media.
Since his return to the White House, the president has repeatedly badmouthed journalists critical of his administration, restricting access and bringing lawsuits demanding huge amounts of compensation.
The US president filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times on Monday, alleging a “decades-long pattern” of smears driven by feelings of “actual malice.”
While broad constitutional protections exist for US media, Trump has found success in similar lawsuits brought against other news organizations, winning multi-million dollar settlements from Disney-owned ABC and Paramount-owned CBS.
The settlements in those cases — which are to be paid to Trump’s future presidential library — were seen as being motivated by the desire of the news organizations’ parent companies to stay in Trump’s good graces.

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s parliament should ensure that a draft media law it is considering upholds the right to freedom of expression, 14 Lebanese and international rights organizations urged on Tuesday.

This includes decriminalizing defamation, blasphemy, insult and criticism of public officials; prohibiting pretrial detention in speech-related violations; and removing onerous restrictions on the establishment of media outlets.

The calls come as the parliament’s Administration and Justice Committee is set to resume its discussion of the draft law on Tuesday.

On Aug. 31, members of parliament received proposed amendments to the draft law’s text, which, organizations said, included reintroducing pretrial detention and provisions that criminalize insult and defamation.

Rights groups, including Amnesty International, Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, and Reporters Without Borders, warned the suggested amendments would further restrict the work of media organizations that are subject to a legal complaint by prohibiting them from publishing materials about the complainant while judicial proceedings are ongoing.

They warned that Lebanon’s criminal defamation laws have been repeatedly used to target and silence government critics, activists and journalists in Lebanon, with journalists repeatedly summoned before security agencies for their work.

“Parliament should ensure that these practices come to an end by passing a media law that is entirely consistent with international human rights standards, including on the right to freedom of expression and media freedom,” the organizations said in a statement.

“Lebanon’s parliament should adopt a media law that includes rights protections that Lebanese rights and media groups have long fought for,” they added.

Rights groups, who reviewed the proposed amendments, opposed the reintroduction of pretrial detention, including “under aggravated circumstances, such as infringing on individuals’ dignity or private lives.”

Pretrial detention is only permissible in Lebanon for offenses that are punishable by more than one year in prison. It is expressly prohibited for media-related offenses in Lebanon’s existing media laws.

“If adopted, such an amendment would be a significant step backward for the protection of the right to freedom of expression and media freedom in Lebanon,” the organizations said.

They noted that the suggested amendment does not specify what “infringing on individuals’ dignity or private lives” entails.

“A vague law that leaves people uncertain of what expression may violate it has a chilling impact on freedom of expression, as people may self-censor out of fear that they might be subject to summons, pretrial detention or eventual prosecution,” they added.

“Vague provisions also leave the law subject to abuse by authorities, who may use them to silence peaceful dissent.”

Such a general legislative ban, they said, would constitute “a serious infringement on the right to freedom of expression.”

The suggested amendments would require licensed television stations to provide the Information Ministry and the National Council for Audiovisual Media with regular reports, including detailed information on the schedule of broadcast programming, and imply that electronic media be subjected to a prior licensing regime rather than a notification regime.

“Unless carefully crafted, such licensing requirements risk allowing for arbitrary decision-making over who can establish and operate media outlets and could facilitate violations of the right to freedom of expression and media freedom,” the statement said.

Lebanon’s parliament began discussing a new media law in 2010 after a former parliament member, Ghassan Moukheiber, and Maharat Foundation, a Beirut-based nongovernmental organization specializing in media and freedom of expression issues, submitted a proposal to amend Lebanon’s outdated Publications Law.

In January 2023, parliament established a subcommittee to study and amend the draft media law, a final version of which was submitted to the Administration and Justice Committee on May 27.

The draft law submitted to the committee in May included advances in protecting the right to freedom of expression in Lebanon, including abolishing pretrial detention and prison sentences for all speech-related violations. It also repealed criminal defamation and insult provisions from Lebanon’s penal code and military judiciary law.

The Administration and Justice Committee started discussions on the latest draft media law on July 29 and has held three meetings on the issue.

However, proposed amendments, introduced to parliament members on Aug. 31, were largely opposed by international rights groups for provisions viewed as restricting media freedom.

Rights groups urged the committee to make its discussions public to ensure transparent legislative debates and facilitate effective public participation.