🔰Jemele Hill: My former boss, Bob Iger, shouldn't interfere with 'The View'

The hawk topic ladies get a stern view from the top. Tone it down, they're being told. Disney chief Bob Iger telling Whoopi and her daytime co-hosts to soften their rhetoric and talk about more than just Donald Trump and politics. ABC didn't deny the report, but the Daily Beast says the stars pushed back hard. This comes as Trump's intimidation tour hits media companies, including Paramount, whose settlement talks sparked the sudden resignation of CBS News executives. Let's get into it. Now, we have someone at this table that has experienced a little bit. I'm sorry, maybe I should take this segment off. When a certain person is at a certain network, you experience this. With the same certain parent company. With the same certain parent company, it happens. What do you make of what is happening here? Well, this is what this entire culture and media environment, like Trump is obviously, again, using his position as president to put pressure on these media companies. And I think a lot of them are capitulating and feeling that pressure because they have things and business deals and things on the side that they want to happen, that they want to do. And so, to me, the disappointing part is that when you capitulate a little, as we've seen with this particular person, it does not matter. He doesn't care if you capitulate. If you give him what he wants, he's not gonna stop asking for it. To me, it's just a simple thing of ratings. It's like, do the ratings support that you should stop talking about Donald Trump? Probably not. So, if you are Bob Iger, who I do have a lot of respect for. He was my former boss. If you're him, that's the only thing that should matter. As long as the audience decides that they have an appetite for that, then that's what the women should talk about, whether you like how they discuss it or not. Just to put a pin on that, the ratings are up from last year at The View. So, the numbers do show. Donald Trump is back in office. Well. That seems like it would make sense. I think from an, you know, I haven't worked behind the scenes anything, but from an editorial perspective, and I'm saying this not just as a conservative, but as someone who watches the news, watches a lot of television, I don't think that it's very good, whether it is The View or a conservative version of The View, to really lean into, I think, what is a lot of the hate that we're seeing when it comes to Donald Trump. There are valid criticisms to be made of Donald Trump, and Donald Trump doesn't need to be handled like kid gloves or anything like that, but from what I see from The View, and I'm not someone who watches it all the time, but from the clips that I see of The View, I just say to myself, why is this a thing? The audience very well may respond to it in a very good way, but just like we asked the last time, what are you getting out of it? I don't know, and maybe it's just ratings. Maybe ratings is the things that you're doing out of it. You're getting opinions that reflects people's opinions. I think that's why their ratings are up, and it's juicy. It's what people want to talk about, and hear about, and I'm confronting that. Every time I try to do something other than politics, everyone just wants me to do politics. It's what people want to hear about. They're telling you shut up in politics. Yeah, but we're living in a time where the business of journalism is coming up against journalism, and we've seen that at The Washington Post, with Amazon. We've already seen it at ABC with that $16 million settlement to Trump over a lawsuit they easily could have won. We're seeing it at CBS. We're seeing the business side. Journalism has two sides, business and editorial. Usually, business leaves editorial alone. That's how it's supposed to be. That's how it's supposed to be, and now, the business side, with these multi-conglomerate companies owning, including ours, our own, are becoming so important, so much more important, and the journalism product is one piece of their portfolio, so they're making decisions for the rest of their portfolio, and shareholders, but the journalism gets the worst of it, the brunt of it, the impact, and it's deleterious, and it's corrosive, and it's gonna lead to more, and the chilling effect, we're already starting to see it. Listen, I have my issues with The View. I'm proud of the ladies for standing up and saying, we're not doing that here. Yeah, somebody has to do this. There's already been a threat. Donald Trump has said out loud that he wants to take licenses away from media companies, so the threat has been put out there, and the fear, I think, from the media companies, not speaking for my bosses, but I am, is that perhaps there's something that they start doing to try and strip away your ability to do business. And where's gonna be the pushback? I mean, we got three and a half years. When he's out of office, what are they gonna talk about then? I'm just gonna throw it out, so maybe, I do two podcasts. I try to stay off politics completely, completely. It's a miracle. And guess what? I've got, my ratings are up, my numbers are up. People are listening because people reach out to me and say, well, I'm glad you finally, you're talking about that. And I do things like, you know, people suffering from MS, people suffering from PTSD. I do things like that because I think that our nation needs to be engaged in other conversations than just what he's doing every day. Because by talking about him every day, I'm glad the lady's pushed back, but I would like them to take a trip outside of the view. Oh, no kidding. Can you go to Cleveland? Can you go down to Miami? Just for a couple seconds, just to see what's going on. Good advice. But we also have to worry about what is this message that's being sent to younger journalists? Because that's what I worry about as well. At a time where our profession is completely under attack. I came up in the journalism environment where you didn't let City Hall come after your reporters. You defended them. And to see, and I know they're not straight journalists, necessarily, on The View, but it's still representing a journalism body. So if the business that you work for, and again, y'all know I went through this at ESPN, if they're not willing to defend you in this moment, that's really leaving you vulnerable. And it's really leaving our entire industry vulnerable. It's not just about this for the ladies, it's about what this represents. You already gave them 15 million. Do you think these asks are gonna stop? No, it's this today is something else tomorrow. So at some point you have to draw the line. Bullies just keep bullying when you keep giving them things. That is what my grandmother always used to say.