By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, May 7 (Reuters) - A group of 10 U.S. Democratic senators on Thursday demanded that Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr explain why he ordered an early review of licences for Walt Disney's eight ABC stations.
The senators -- including Ed Markey, Chuck Schumer and Maria Cantwell -- called the action "the latest and most extreme step in your use of the FCC’s licensing authority as a cudgel against broadcasters whose editorial choices displease the president."
Carr's action came just a day after President Donald Trump publicly demanded ABC late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel be fired for a joke he cracked.
Disney has until May 28 to respond. The FCC has not revoked a broadcast license in more than four decades.
Carr, who earlier denied the White House pressured him to take the action, and Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The senators want to know if Carr or his staff spoke to anyone at the White House in the days before the Disney decision.
"You have effectively converted the FCC’s authority over the public airwaves into an instrument of presidential retribution against constitutionally protected
speech," the senators said in a letter to Carr.
Disney's broadcast licenses were not scheduled to be reviewed before October 2028. After a joke by Kimmel drew calls from the White House for ABC to fire the comedian, the FCC on Tuesday ordered an early license review.
Kimmel did a send-up of the longstanding comic's role at the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner on his ABC show, joking that first lady Melania Trump had "a glow like an expectant widow."
The joke was made days before the actual black-tie dinner celebrating press freedom and free speech, in Washington, which this year was not going to feature a comedian. The president and the first lady were rushed from the dinner after shots were fired outside the room where the dinner was being held, which was determined to be an assassination attempt.
Disney said last week it has "a long record of operating in full compliance with FCC rules" and added it is "prepared to show that through the appropriate legal channels."
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
