In a March 2024 opinion piece, Forbes editor-in-chief Steve Forbes, after calling free speech a “bedrock right” for U.S. citizens, asserted that it was under “Cuban-like assault” in Canada because the “leftist” government planned to introduce the Online Harms Act (which ultimately did not pass).
In June of that year, The Atlantic piled on further, with a piece entitled “Canada’s Extremist Attack on Free Speech,” which said that the Online Harms Act contained “draconian criminal penalties on hate speech.”
Without overtly saying so, both implicitly suggested that such a betrayal of the fundamentals of free speech could never happen in the U.S., where the right to speak freely has been enshrined since the 1791 ratification of the First Amendment.
But if that’s what they believed, they completely underestimated Donald Trump. With astonishing speed, Trump’s government has insinuated itself into virtually every aspect of American life, including the media, where it has begun slowly but steadily chipping away at First Amendment rights.
(Citytv, which has the Canadian rights to Kimmel, said that it will air repeat episodes of Hudson & Rex while the late-night show is off the air.)
The decision followed Kimmel’s Monday monologue criticising the right’s reaction to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, in which he said it might have been a member of the “MAGA gang” that killed the political commentator, and accused them of trying to score political points off his death.
Less than two months ago, I suggested that CBS’s sudden cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was more of a business decision than a political one. Indeed, there’s a valid argument to be made that shifting viewing habits, and the corresponding impact on advertising revenue, has completely upended one of the medium’s most venerable formats, the late-night talk show.
But while Colbert’s cancellation (rightfully) raised serious questions about the role of the Trump administration in that decision, Kimmel’s removal feels like a flashing red light—a warning that the U.S. is quickly sliding into autocracy, and the corporations that control its big media are unwilling to fight back.
Political satire has long been considered a sacrosanct aspect of U.S. culture, its history quite literally dating back to the country’s founding. Every U.S. president since Washington has been pilloried by cartoonists and pundits. It goes hand-in-hand with being the most powerful person in the world.
Commentary was once the domain of newspaper opinion columnists and cartoonists, but that was before declining ad and subscription revenues led to many of the country’s most influential dailies being hollowed out and left on life support.
Lately, for better or worse, the mantle of political commentary seems to have fallen on late-night TV, with hosts like Kimmel and Colbert pointing out the hypocrisy and idiocy of politicians from all sides of the political spectrum. Undeniably, they’ve been targeting Trump and his followers more since 2016, but that’s a reflection of the sheer volume and absurdity of the material they are given.
For now, there are still some other voices and outlets willing to poke holes in the ballooning Trump mythos. The current season of South Park, for example, has absolutely savaged Trump, with episodes portraying him as Satan’s lover, and depicting him and vice-president J.D. Vance as Mr. Roarke and his sidekick Tattoo from the 1970s show Fantasy Island.
Paramount reportedly shelled out $1.5 billion for the streaming rights to South Park for the next five years, but how much more of this kind of lampooning can the notoriously thin-skinned Trump take before he begins publicly voicing his displeasure with its owners while privately exerting pressure via threats and coercion?
Saturday Night Live has been similarly vociferous in its attacks on Trump, who was featured in the vast majority of its cold opens last season. Already a target of Trump’s ire—“a bad show that’s not funny or smart”—is it unreasonable to think that the president, no doubt emboldened by his recent “victories” over Colbert and Kimmel, might try to take down another TV institution?
But it’s not just TV that’s feeling the pain. This week also saw Trump’s lawyers file an outrageous $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times that accused one of journalism’s most venerable institutions of attempting to undermine his legitimacy as a presidential candidate.
Bloomberg called it an attempt to “defenestrate” the media, which, it said, “the Constitution’s framers singled out for special protection because they saw it as essential to a healthy democracy.”
The decision to take Kimmel off the air may seem sudden, but it’s also the result of a years-long effort by Trump to delegitimise his critics, accusing them of suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome” while cavalierly dismissing any negative coverage as “fake news.”
A similar playbook is being used around the world, usually by right-wing parties who want to radically overhaul their system of governance by sowing distrust. Painting the mainstream mass media as an enemy of the people is the first page in that playbook, and we’ve also seen it used with increasing regularity and effectiveness here in Canada.
At the same time, ad dollars continue to stream away from traditional media generally regulated by a set of content standards and best practices, and into global media platforms with little to no interest in standards and best practices of any kind.
According to the most recent edition of the Edelman Trust Barometer, 67% of Canadians (an all-time high) fear that government leaders lie to us. Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds (63%) of respondents agreed that it’s becoming harder to tell if news is from respected media or an individual trying to deceive people. Trust in traditional media sits at 58%, a two-point decline from 2024.
What’s unfolding in the U.S. is inextricably tied to the ad industry, and therefore relevant to anyone reading this column. For better or worse, and you’ll find supporters and detractors on both sides, advertising is the fuel that powers the flow of credible information, commentary and, yes, political satire, essential to a healthy, functioning democracy.
It is perhaps a heavy responsibility to confer upon marketers, but guess what—that’s the trade-off for using these channels and their respective properties for promotional purposes. And from this vantage point, it seems like a fair trade.
Legacy media thrived for years by providing brands with an enticing combination of reach and a brand-safe environment. But money is power, and when it comes to protecting a media ecosystem that supports and contributes to a healthy society held together by democratic good governance, there is considerable power within the advertising community.
But it feels like a time is coming, perhaps sooner rather than later, when brand leaders and the agency executives responsible for advertising budgets will face a monumental decision: Oppose the destruction of a media system intended to challenge authority and protect freedom of speech, or implicitly support the deconstruction of that system by further enriching those corporations willing to support Trump and his kind as they march toward autocracy.
The focus this week—and likely for the foreseeable future—is on the U.S., but if the Trump playbook is effective in other parts of the world, that moment will eventually arrive in other countries, including Canada.
