By Helen Coster
NEW YORK, July 16 (Reuters) – Two of the three major U.S. television networks and CNN have decided not to broadcast a planned prime-time address on Thursday by President Donald Trump on their primary platforms, risking the ire of an administration that has placed unprecedented pressure on American media.
The speech is expected to focus on election security, four months before the critical midterm elections.
Networks have broad First Amendment rights to decide what they choose to broadcast, experts noted. But historically, broadcasters have carried most such speeches on the grounds that they provide information of public importance.
Late Thursday afternoon, a spokesperson for ABC News said the network will run Trump’s speech on its ABC News Live streaming platform and ABC News Radio – not its broadcast channel.
NBC News plans to carry the president’s remarks on its free streaming service, NBC News NOW, but will not air the speech on its main broadcast channel, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company declined to comment.
In a statement, CNN said it will monitor the speech for news, with a live feed appearing on its website and CNN All Access, its subscription streaming channel.
The ABC and NBC streaming channels generally draw a fraction of the viewers that their traditional broadcast signals reach. CNN’s digital network is a paid-for service with a smaller audience than its regular cable channel.
The White House is considering using the speech to disclose sensitive intelligence related to whether China had the intention or ability to interfere in the 2020 U.S. election which Trump claims was stolen from him, Reuters reported on Wednesday. Some Trump officials worry that intelligence, which was collected and analyzed during his first term, could be misleading.
During a Thursday press briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “it is also very possible” Trump will mention the current situation with Iran and the economy at the top of the speech, and could possibly address a range of topics.
She said that is “all the more reason” for the networks to carry the speech live, and for Americans to tune in.
PRESSURE ON NETWORKS
Trump has spent years sowing doubts about electoral outcomes, falsely claiming his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden was rigged. He has also claimed without evidence that mail-in voting is rife with fraud, voting machines are vulnerable to manipulation and non-citizen voting is widespread.
Some Democrats, including U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have urged networks not to air the speech, arguing Trump is likely to repeat debunked claims.
A spokesperson for the third major U.S. networks, CBS, did not respond to Reuters questions about whether it planned to carry the address live. Fox News also did not respond to a request for comment.
At CBS, the takeover of Paramount by David Ellison, whose billionaire father Larry is a Trump ally, has roiled the newsroom and prompted the departure of senior staff from the news magazine “60 Minutes”. Some employees have alleged political interference in editorial decisions, which the network has denied.
Ellison is now awaiting FCC approval for Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, which could give him control of CNN, a network Trump has long criticized for what he says is unfair coverage. The U.S. Justice Department’s Antitrust Division gave its blessing to the deal last month.
The speech comes at a sensitive moment for U.S. media.
Walt Disney-owned ABC is facing two pending inquiries from the Federal Communications Commission, including one examining whether its daytime talk show “The View” violated equal-time rules by interviewing a Democratic Senate candidate in Texas.
The FCC could move as early as next month to begin the process of withdrawing the licenses for Disney’s eight company-owned ABC stations.
Trump has repeatedly attacked NBC and its parent company, Comcast, which he has dubbed “Concast.” Last month he stormed out of an interview with NBC political reporter Kristen Welker after calling the network “a one-sided crooked network.”
Comcast last month announced plans to split into two publicly traded companies through a spinoff of NBCUniversal and Sky. Analysts have said the move could make NBCUniversal an attractive takeover target.
FCC Chair Brendan Carr is also investigating Comcast and its NBC unit over its diversity practices, which Carr said was the basis for the decision to speed up the reviews of Disney’s ABC stations.
The conservative-leaning cable news network Fox News, owned by Rupert Murdoch, generally carries all of Trump’s speeches but may also be wary of this one.
In 2023, the network had to pay out $787 million to settle a defamation suit over its airing of false claims about the 2020 election.
On Wednesday, Carr said in an interview with NewsNation that he thought the broadcast networks should air Trump’s remarks.
“This is something that the American people have every right to be able to get over the airwaves,” Carr said.
Carr did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
(Reporting by Helen Coster; Additional reporting by Edmund Lee in New York and David Shepardson in Washington D.C.; Editing by Alistair Bell, Nick Zieminski and David Gregorio)
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