FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said that the agency “has an enforcement action underway on ABC’s The View after the show featured James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, as a guest.
“We’re taking a look at it,” Carr told reporters on Wednesday, but he declined to go into specifics. Fox News reported earlier this month that The View was under investigation for potential violation of the Equal Time Rule, which requires broadcasters who feature candidates to provide airtime to rivals if requested.
ABC has not yet commented. The show also has featured Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), one of Talarico’s Democratic primary opponents, as a guest.
Carr’s comments follow Stephen Colbert‘s show on Monday, when the host said that CBS attorneys declined to allow an interview with Talarico to be broadcast out of concern of triggering the equal time rule.
CBS has disputed Colbert’s account, saying that he was not prohibted from featuring Talarico but “was provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates.” On his show on Tuesday, Colbert said that CBS attorneys had reviewed what he said on the previous night’s program. The interview was posted on YouTube.
Talk shows had previously operated under the assumption that they were exempt from the Equal Time Rule, the same immunity given to news programming.
But the FCC under Carr last month issued guidance warning talk shows like The View, Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel Live shouldn’t assume that they are exempt when they feature political candidates.
As the news played out as a major political and media story on Tuesday, Carr said that he was “highly entertained. I think it was one of the most fun days I’ve had in the job watching sort of the hilarity of how this story played out.”
He added, “Look, anybody that’s not suffering from a terminal case of Trump derangement syndrome could see right away yesterday the exact story arc and how it was going to play out. You had a Democrat candidate who understood the way the news media works, and he took advantage of all of your sortt of prior conceptions to run a hoax, apparently, for the purpose of raising money and getting clicks, and the news media played right into it.”
Talarico’s campaign reported on Wednesday that it had raised $2.5 million since the Colbert interview, a record.
Talarico posted on X a link to the YouTube interview and the message, “This is the interview Donald Trump didn’t want you to see. His FCC refused to air my interview with Stephen Colbert. Trump is worried we’re about to flip Texas.” In fact, it was CBS and/or Colbert’s show that made the decision about the interview.
Carr also based the media for its coverage of the incident, calling it a “perfect encapsulation of why the American people have more trust in gas station sushi than they do in the national news media. This was plainly an effort ginned up to get clicks and raise money, and you guys ate it up.”
In its guidance last month on the Equal Time Rule, the FCC said that in considering whether a show is exempt, they would take into account whether a talk show’s featuring of a political candidate is “motivated by partisan purposes.” Carr said that a host’s political donations to candidates could be one of the factors considered. Colbert has hosted fundraisers for presidential candidates, and Kimmel is headlining an event next month for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Anna Gomez, the sole Democrat on the commission, characterized the Colbert incident as another example of the FCC using its enforcement power to punish broadcasters for speech the Trump administration doesn’t like.
“I do think that the threats are the point, the harassment is the point, because the commission is not going to survive appeal if it actually takes action against these broadcasters, because what it is doing is a violation of the First Amendment,” she said.
More to come.
English (US) ·