As 6abc’s broadcast license is threatened, it is urgent to protect the freedom of the press
At the Trump administration’s urging, the FCC is challenging the station’s broadcast license. The public has until July 29 to submit comments online in support of the channel.
President Donald Trump and his appointees are obstructing the free press. Calling reporters the enemy of the state; suing newspapers that publish things he doesn’t like; demanding that television stations fire hosts; arresting and serving reporters with subpoenas — the attacks are real and often successful.
It’s hard to know what to do to protect freedom of the press, but in the Delaware Valley, there is a clear, straightforward action we can take to fight Trump’s censorship.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is trying to exert control over which news gets on the air by threatening to withdraw the broadcast licenses that are required for stations to transmit their signals over the airwaves. Locally, it is reviewing the license held by WPVI, or 6abc.
Why ABC stations? Trump has long tried to force the Disney-owned company (which also owns the ABC network) to pull two shows that have been critical of him and his administration: The View and Jimmy Kimmel Live! — which both air on WPVI.
Unlike other attacks on the media, this one we can stop.
The FCC must seek “community input” before arriving at any decision about the fate of WPVI’s broadcast license. You can tell the FCC to stop attacking the free press by clicking here and filling out the one-page form. Take time to tell the Trump administration and the FCC that freedom of the press is a foundational principle.
A free press was so important to our “Founding Fathers” that it was listed in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Disney and WPVI are not perfect. There is plenty not to like, but the solution to the problem of corporate-controlled news is to break up the corporate giants, not to replace them with other corporate giants that will support Trump.
Trump’s threatened control of news media is almost unfathomable.
One of Trump’s first acts in his second term was to remove FCC commissioners who were loyal to the Constitution, not to him. Then Trump began limiting access to press briefings. In February 2025, Associated Press reporters were indefinitely barred from press events after refusing to use the president’s preferred term “Gulf of America” instead of “Gulf of Mexico.”
The same year, CNN, NPR, NBC News, the Hill, Politico, the New York Times, and the Washington Post were denied Pentagon office space, and in September, the U.S. Department of Defense, which Trump renamed the Department of War, required reporters to sign a pledge promising not to use material even if it was unclassified. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth further barred the Associated Press, Reuters, and Getty Images photographers from attending Iran war briefings.
The administration has arrested reporters for covering news, deported others for critical coverage, raided reporters’ homes, and threatened reporters with arrest for not revealing sources.
It’s unbelievable that those conservatives who so often talk about the original intention of the Constitution are silent as Trump destroys the constitutionally mandated freedom of the press.
It is appalling.
And too often, we can do nothing to support the free press under attack. This time, we can.
Lance Haver is the consumer reporter for the Philadelphia Hall Monitor, a worker-owned news service supported by the Lenfest Foundation. Lance@LanceHaver.com