This past summer, it was announced that come May 2026 “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” will no longer be on air. It isn’t that Stephen Colbert himself is going away, the entire show, in general, is coming to a halt on the network. CBS alleges that the cancellation was due to financial reasons, not the show’s content, despite Colbert being a staunch Donald Trump critic. But how can we determine the validity of CBS’s statements? After all, this cancellation came during pertinent negotiations regarding the pending approval of Paramount Global’s merger with Skydance Media by the Federal Trade Commission. It is widely speculated that the FCC’s approval was pursuant to Paramount settling their lawsuit with Donald Trump regarding their 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, as weeks after the settlement came in, the merger was approved. It is important to note that after the settlement was announced, Colbert opined that said settlement was a “big fat bribe,” because what happened after that? Three days later, CBS canceled his show. Two weeks after that, the merger was made official. So the settlement came in, soon after, so did the FCC’s approval. Then, right after Colbert criticized it, his show was cancelled, and shortly thereafter, the merger was finalized. So, how can one argue that this cancellation was not for a purely political reason?

Skipping to a few months later, mere weeks ago, Jimmy Kimmel made a remark about political commentator Charlie Kirk’s death. However, the comment was barely targeted at Kirk’s passing, but more at Trump’s reaction to Kirk’s death. When asked by the media how he was holding up regarding Kirk’s passing, Trump immediately swept it under the rug so he could talk about the White House ballroom’s renovations. Almost immediately after this episode aired, his show was pulled off indefinitely. Almost a week later, Kimmel’s show was back on air after he and the network had “thoughtful conversations.”

So, what does all of this say about the First Amendment? The First Amendment protects freedom of expression by barring the government from limiting the rights of individuals and the press to speak freely. When our speech is censored by the government, that is an intrusion of one of our principal rights that we were founded on as a nation. If media pundits aren’t allowed to speak freely on their shows, then what is the point of having a show if it is almost entirely scripted or regulated to the point of being unnatural? I believe that in being exposed to other people’s viewpoints, we as humans can grow individually, and we as a society can grow as well. Our country is a melting pot of individuals from various backgrounds–racial, socioeconomic, political, etc.–and our diversity is what makes us such a great nation. I believe that censoring the media is not just a violation of our rights but is harmful to us as a society, as it inhibits people’s abilities to hear other viewpoints and other sides of the argument.