Trump’s Fascist Power Play Threatens Chicago’s Favorite Local TV Station
It’s not just Chicago. Trump’s FCC is moving to shut down local TV stations in blue cities around the country. We need to take this threat seriously.
Donald Trump’s latest political retribution scheme against the news media hits home for me. I used to produce newscasts at Chicago’s ABC7. I’m proud of the work we did reporting the news and impressed by what the station continues to do today. ABC7 was the city’s first ever television station and the third in the nation. It’s where Oprah Winfrey launched her legendary show and, in a very large and competitive media market, it has been the most popular broadcast channel for decades. Now, Trump is trying to shut down the station by yanking its broadcast license.
We need to take this threat seriously.
Trump’s attacks on the mainstream news media are quickly escalating. Earlier this month, Trump’s DOJ sent FBI agents with subpoenas to homes of New York Times reporters because the president was unhappy about reporting on safety issues with the Qatari-gifted Air Force One. In January, the FBI searched the home of a Washington Post reporter and confiscated her phone and multiple laptops. Also in January, the FBI arrested two news reporters — Don Lemon and Georgia Fort — over their coverage of a Minneapolis ICE protest at a church. The list of media intimidation and outright attacks goes on and on.
Now the president is coming after ABC News, which is part of the Disney empire. The network dares to report the news accurately, including refusing to carry Trump’s recent election conspiracy speech. ABC also airs late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel, who makes jokes at the president’s expense, and daytime talk show The View, - which gets under Trump’s skin. Never mind that all of this is protected by the First Amendment: Trump and Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr are moving quickly to penalize the network and revoke its broadcast licenses.
ABC owns and operates eight local stations in the blue cities of New York, LA, San Francisco, Houston, Raleigh, Fresno, Philly, and Chicago. If Trump succeeds in revoking their licenses, all these stations would be shut down. That means some 28 million Americans would be without an important news source in their communities. Destroying mainstream news and a free media is every dictator’s dream. But let me tell you a bit about what this would mean here in Chicago.
Central to ABC7 are its deep ties to the people of this city. Viewers trust its news reporting, and the station is committed to the community. It produces locally focused shows, including coverage of countless parades celebrating our amazing diversity. It carried live the Pride Parade last month and the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in March, and it will have the Bud Billiken Back to School Parade celebrating Black excellence in August. And it does this every year. Of course, all the coverage is free to watch on your television or smartphone, no paywall.
The station’s news anchors, familiar faces in the community, regularly emcee charity events in every community. When an important story breaks in our city, they do not wait to tell us about it, but provide real time coverage — whether that’s in the crowd outside Wrigley Field when the Cubs won the World Series, inside the courthouse as we all awaited the verdict in the Laquan McDonald case, or on the streets during the ICE surge here last fall.
One of Chicago’s biggest stories this month has been extreme weather, with a second heatwave in three weeks and acrid smoke from Canadian wildfires blanketing the city, pushing air quality into the danger zone. Like many of my fellow Chicagoans, I want to know how bad it is and when it will stop, so I keep checking in with my former station for updates. ABC7 has timely weather forecasts and news stories about everything from event cancellations to safety tips. I’ve been glued to its smoke tracker and air quality maps.
The good news is that ABC7 in Chicago and the other local stations have joined the Disney effort to fight back with a tough campaign calling out Trump’s actions and urging viewers to submit comments to the FCC on both investigations. As of this writing, the FCC website shows nearly 80,000 comments on “The View” rule and over 125,000 comments on the early license review of the eight TV stations. There are also commercials to help inform viewers of Trump’s actions. This is the one on ABC7 in Chicago:
Fighting back is a new tactic for Disney/ ABC, and I am delighted they have joined the fight. Who can forget how ABC became the first mainstream news outlet to write Trump a fat check to settle a meritless defamation suit? Or how corporate owner Disney pulled Kimmel off the air under pressure from Trump, Carr, and MAGA? Since reinstating Kimmel, however, the company has grown a stiffer backbone. It’s about time.
We’re lucky to retain a robust local news ecosystem here in Chicago, but it’s still a shadow of what it was just a few years ago before the bottom fell out of the news business. The last thing we need is for the Trump administration to make good on its threats against one of the city’s leading news sources. Plus, if the biggest and most trusted outlet is taken out by a regime determined to silence independent voices, it doesn’t bode well for any mainstream news organizations in our city or beyond.
Jennifer Schulze is a former local TV news exec, reporter & producer in Chicago with a few opinions about the news. She’s on Bluesky @newsjennifer.bsky.social and Substack at “Indistinct Chatter.”
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