EDITORIAL – Attacking freedom of speech under the guise of freedom of speech

An editorial by Mel Rothenburger

EACH EVENING. as I tuned into Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue (I seldom hung around for the guest interviews unless there was one I was particularly interested in) I marvelled at his courage and that of ABC in standing up to Donald Trump.

Surely, I thought, sooner or later Kimmel was either going to get sued by Trump for a billion dollars, or Trump would find a way to get rid of him by turning the screws on ABC.

Well, Kimmel is gone, Trump is gleeful, and ABC is doing a lousy job of explaining itself. Kimmel was fired for a brief comment on the Charlie Kirk assassination.  It ran over and over again on various networks today:

“We hit 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 doing everything they can to score political points from it,” he said at the start of Monday’s show.

Note that the remark was aimed at MAGA, not at Charlie Kirk. The “one of them” phrase was off base because the shooter’s motives have yet to be figured out but his message was about some in the right wing of the political spectrum using Kirk’s death to claim that the “radical left” is responsible for growing political violence in the U.S. He said nothing disparaging about Kirk.

He surely would have explained it in the comments he was planning to make on last night’s segment before he was canned. Trump, who praised ABC’s decision, may have been especially cheesed off at Kimmel showing a TV clip of a reporter asking him how he was coping with the death of his friend Kirk, and Trump brushing off the question in favour of bragging about his new ballroom.

So Kimmel is silenced but Stephen Colbert isn’t, not yet. Though he has also been given notice by CBC he’ll be cancelled, he still has a voice for the moment. And he took the opportunity for about 15 minutes at the top of his show tonight (Sept. 18, 2025) to ridicule ABC’s cancellation of Kimmel, calling it “the latest and baldest action in a long campaign against media critics.”

He didn’t stop there, launching into a mock editorial about the need to stay silent. And his guests? CNN program host Jake Tapper and New Yorker editor David Remnick, who extended the conversation about Kimmel.

Kimmel, by the way, had decried the cancellation of Colbert’s show.

Theoretically, Kimmel could return at some point, as his show has officially been “pre-empted indefinitely.” But the self-appointed critics aren’t done yet. They’ll continue their campaign against freedom of speech, all the while calling it a defence of freedom of speech.

Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Webster Foundation Commentator of the Year finalist. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor.  He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.