Photograph Source: Erin Scott – Public Domain

People are hailing the decision by ABC, Disney, and their corporate mascot Mickey Mouse to put Jimmy Kimmel back on the air as some grand victory for free speech. That is a fantasy. The suspension of Kimmel in the first place, along with CBS’s cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, exposes the real story: the overwhelming grip of corporate, for-profit media on our public life. These conglomerates are not champions of the First Amendment. They are gatekeepers, deciding what we hear, what we see, and ultimately, what we think. Their decision to restore Kimmel is not proof of freedom; it is proof of how much control they wield.

The fact remains that ABC should never have suspended Kimmel. Doing so revealed the iron logic of the industry: profit first, speech second. This is hardly new. More than half a century ago, CBS cancelled The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour because the comedians were too willing to confront Vietnam and politics head-on. The network decided controversy was bad for business, and business always wins. ABC’s punishment of Kimmel and CBS’s silencing of Colbert are not aberrations—they are part of a long tradition of corporate censorship dressed up as programming decisions.

What makes today worse is that the space for independent voices has nearly disappeared. In the 1960s, even if a major network pulled the plug,........

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