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Join NowMoveOn members urge ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX to air major immigration speech
MoveOn members from across the country are flooding the phone lines of four major broadcast networks today after they indicated they won’t air the president of the United States’ address from the Oval Office.
President Obama will address the nation tonight to discuss significant and long-anticipated reforms to our broken immigration system. This is an issue that impacts millions of people directly, tens of millions of their family members, and all Americans in some way.
This is exactly why we have public airwaves. Yet executives at four major networks would rather not break for 15 minutes from their TV dramas and weight-loss reality programs. This is unacceptable—but we still have time to change it.
The networks have a history of airing primetime Oval Office addresses by Republican and Democratic presidents. It is part of their public responsibility. And when President George W. Bush spoke about immigration in 2006, all the major networks aired his address live.
The CEOs of NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX need to hear from the public that it’s shameful for them not to air this Oval Office address. Can you call their offices or call them out on Twitter—and let them know that Americans deserve to hear their president address the nation?
Their phone numbers and Twitter handles are:
- ABC: 212-456-7777; @abcnetwork
- CBS: 212-975-4321; @cbs
- NBC: 212-664-4444; @nbc
- FOX: 310-369-3553; @foxtv
If you call, tell them, “I believe it’s the public duty that comes with public airwaves to air a presidential address on important issues—such as the speech on immigration tonight.”
If you’d rather use Twitter, here’s a sample tweet:
“.@nbcnews, you’re using our public airwaves. Please air the @BarackObama speech on #immigration tonight.”
President Obama will speak briefly at 8 p.m. ET tonight about the critical issue of immigration reform. Clearly, the network execs don’t think that this warrants public attention. But they are wrong.
When our elected leader plans to speak to the nation live from the Oval Office, it should be our decision whether to tune in—not the decision of a few executives whose networks profit off of our public airwaves.
Call the networks now—or use Twitter to call them out—and demand that the networks push back their programming 15 minutes so Americans can listen to this message from their president.