According to Reuters, on the evening of July 16 local time, U.S. President Trump used prime time to deliver a speech to the nation at the White House. However, American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and National Broadcasting Company (NBC), two of the three major mainstream television networks in the United States, did not broadcast the speech on their main channels. This action caused great dissatisfaction among Trump.
During his speech, Trump said that the media that refused to broadcast his speech was participating in a "conspiracy". "Rarely, both ABC and NBC, these 'fake news media', have stated that they will not broadcast this speech. Such fraudulent behavior should result in the revocation of their licenses."
Among the three major American television networks, only CBS suspended its regular programming and broadcast Trump's speech on its main channel. However, before the broadcast, anchor Tony Dokoupil preempted to refute the content of the speech.
Dopookier said, “To be honest, many of the things Trump said about the election were false.” He also added that CBS chose to broadcast this speech live because “it will be news, and it is our duty to report news.”
The speech began approximately 15 minutes after it was interrupted by CBS due to its rebuttal of Trump's claims about election fraud.
In addition, CNN did not broadcast Trump's speech on its main channel. Instead, it chose to livestream the speech on paid streaming subscription channels.
Experts say that, according to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, broadcast television stations have broad rights to decide what content to broadcast. However, following long-standing practice, whenever the President's speech involves major public affairs, all major broadcast networks usually provide live coverage of the entire speech.
