News Editor John O’Connor explores the growing trend of censorship on late-night television in America and speaks with UCD Professor of International Politics and journalist Scott Lucas to delve deeper into this worrying rise in censorship
On 17 July late night talk show host Stephen Colbert announced live on air CBS will be canceling his show in May 2026. In a statement by CBS their cancelling of the show was “purely a financial decision” and claimed the show was losing $40 million a year and did not reflect the show’s ratings or performance which is evident through Colbert's recent Emmy win for Best Talk Show Series. However, the cancellation of the show does follow Colbert’s criticism of the settlement between President Trump and CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global.
In the agreement to settle a lawsuit over the editing of CBS’s 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris leading up to the Presidential election, Paramount Global agreed to pay the President $16million. Trump posted on Truth Social praising the decision to cancel the show and said “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.”
On 18 September ABC announced that Jimmy Kimmel’s show would be next and said they would be taking the show off the air indefinitely following the controversy over Kimmel’s comments made live on air about the death of Charlie Kirk and Republicans and MAGA supporters taking advantage of Kirk’s death. “Jimmy Kimmel Live will be preempted indefinitely,” an ABC spokesperson said. ABC’s decision came only a few hours after a Trump administration official who was responsible for licensing ABC’s stations made a public statement pressuring ABC to take lengths to punish Kimmel.
However, after almost a week of the show being off air, Disney, ABC’s parent company, made a statement saying "We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday." The decision to reinstate Kimmel came after amounting pressure on Disney and was later heavily criticized by Trump and his administration.
The cancelling of Colbert and the attempted cancelling of Kimmel has brought up many questions of free speech in recent weeks. “The term ‘free speech’ has now become politicized; it’s used as a political weapon,” Professor Scott Lucas of UCD’s Clinton Institute tells The University Observer. “On the one hand, if it’s Trump speaking out, then he should have unrestricted free speech. On the other hand, if it’s someone else, that right isn’t guaranteed - which is exactly what the Kimmel case highlighted.”
“That approach to free speech which is shared by much of the Trump administration is reinforced by how Trump has acted as President to try to effectively make media organisations bow down to him. It’s not a question of making an outright ban through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), for example, he files a whole series of lawsuits to media outlets, and they don’t want to go through the hassle of defending, expensive defending, they settle. ABC, CBS, YouTube recently. Media organisation cave to him in this case [...] In the case of the late-night talk show hosts, Trump despises them because they make fun of him.”
The silencing of late night talk show hosts in America has become a clear indicator of a changing country where free speech is not held to the same standard as previous administrations and where the respect for differing voices is quickly diminishing in favour of elevating one singular voice: that of President Trump.