What would Barbara Walters think if she were around to watch “The View” this week?
When she was leading the daily roundtable at the venerable panel show she created, Walters leaned into the news, even when it hurt. To wit: When her star hire, Rosie O’Donnell, got into a feud with Walters’ longtime friend, Donald Trump, Walters returned from vacation to excoriate him as “that poor, pathetic man.” It was a way to defend the franchise, and to ensure that “The View” stayed on top of the news cycle — although it was easier to push back against Donald Trump before he had the full force of the federal government at his disposal.
This week, the biggest story in the country has been the defenestration of an ABC star, Jimmy Kimmel, following FCC and affiliate pressure placed on the network. And “The View’s” panel, normally unafraid to confront any issue or story, has shied away from the topic entirely. It’s not that they avoided politics, exactly: Thursday’s episode, airing hours after the news of Kimmel’s sidelining broke Wednesday, featured discussion of FBI director Kash Patel’s testimony before congress (after leading off with moderator Whoopi Goldberg marking colleague Sara Haines’ birthday in a smiley, nothing-to-see-here segment). A lengthy clip package of Patel’s uninspiring performance was followed by a couple of seconds of awkward dead air, as the hosts fumbled to figure out what to say, or, perhaps, what they could say. But at least this was within bounds: The subject of Kimmel was simply too difficult, apparently, to address. It didn’t come up Friday, either.
If the hosts and producers, as well as their corporate bosses at ABC, are feeling pressure — well, they’re not wrong to. Extremely recent history has shown that Sinclair and Nexstar, powerful groups that own numerous ABC affiliates, could effectively cancel “The View” by refusing to broadcast it. And that’s leaving aside the damage FCC Chair Brendan Carr could do. On Thursday, the same day the show first refused to engage the question of its network-mate’s fate, Carr speculated that the commission might “look into ‘The View.’” Currently, its status as a news show allows it leeway in terms of its bookings; were that designation removed, it would be forced to obey an equal-time rule, granting equivalent access to both political parties.
“The View” has historically booked Democrats and Republicans alike, but mandating the mix from on high — particularly as reprisal for coverage that the Trump administration does not like — would put an end to the show’s editorial independence. It’s another frightening example of power politics played at the very fraying margins of constitutionality, and — though it’s easy to say this from outside the crucible of ABC News — a moment that’s not being met with commensurate courage. Imagine a “View” that leaned, hard, into discussing what was going on at ABC and the ways in which it represented government censorship of an order not seen, certainly, in the 28 years the show’s been on the air so far. That show would reflect the conversation that viewers are having at home once the TV set is turned off, and would have the rhetorical fire for which “The View” has, until now, been known.