13 ms·

Stephen Colbert says CBS forbid interview of Democrat because of FCC threat

223 points by voxadam 8mo ago

bobomonkey 8mo ago
Use publicly owned airwaves, expect to have to abide by the campaign finance rules. Can't just donate excellent coverage to just one candidate.
- kgwxd 8mo ago
  Doesn't apply to late night shows.
  - nomel 8mo ago
    Reference? This says it now does (and parent is right): https://www.mediainstitute.org/2026/01/22/fcc-late-night-shows-may-not-be-exempt-from-equal-time-rule/ https://www.mediainstitute.org/2026/01/22/fcc-late-night-sho... To me, this seems reasonable, since I could imagine all the networks skirting the intent in any way possible.
    - SpicyLemonZest 8mo ago
      This notice was published as a flagrant act of unlawful retaliation against late night shows for criticizing the sitting President. I think it's misleading to present it as a legitimate action, even if the Trump regime might attempt to enforce it and courts might uphold that enforcement. As the only non-regime FCC commissioner remaining has pointed out, the FCC specifically did not engage in the actual rulemaking procedure that's normally required to change these rules, because if they had their retaliatory motivation would have been a huge obstacle.
      - nomel 8mo ago
        > I think it's misleading to present it as a legitimate action Legitimate or not, the policy is what's there now, until challenged. You agree with that: > might attempt to enforce it and courts might uphold that enforcement And, clearly, so do their lawyers.
        SpicyLemonZest 8mo ago
        The problem is that the policy will not be challenged if people accept it as legitimate. Talk shows aren't common enough or important enough that a challenge is guaranteed to come. And so the ratchet of authoritarian takeover advances a little bit further, as Donald Trump works towards his quite explicit goal of making it illegal for the media to say bad things about him.
  - apparent 8mo ago
    Doesn't apply to news shows. The key question is whether late night shows are news shows.
- dabinat 8mo ago
  It just says they have to give equal time, not prevent someone from coming on the show completely. But the other candidates have to make a request to be included and no-one made any requests. Don’t act like this FCC’s actions should be taken in good faith.
  - nomel 8mo ago
    > not prevent someone from coming on the show completely. No, they weren't prevented from coming on, as the article poorly points out. It appears that CBS sees equal airtime as a very serious threat to their programming. This makes complete sense, if you've watched an intentionally biased show like Colbert. edit: downvotes, please explain. This is the stated reason from TFA!: > "CC Chairman Brendan Carr recently issued a warning to late-night and daytime talk shows that they may no longer qualify for the bona fide news exemption to the equal-time rule, and subsequently opened an investigation into ABC’s The View after an interview with Talarico." > Colbert played audio of a recent Carr interview in which the FCC chairman said, “If [Jimmy] Kimmel and Colbert want to continue to do their programming, they don’t want to have to comply with this requirement, then they can go to a cable channel or a podcast or a streaming service and that’s fine.” > Colbert said he “decided to take Brendan Carr’s advice” and interviewed Talarico for a segment posted on his show’s YouTube channel. Help me understand if I'm missing something here. And the show is, clearly, intentionally biased. It targets a left wing audience, with its jokes specifically written around that (always has, that's fine), and nearly exclusively, has left wing political guests.
    - JohnTHaller 8mo ago
      CBS is now run by a right-wing billionaire. The equal time rule is being used as cover to kill an interview that the Republican administration doesn't like. Same way CBS keeps killing 60 Minutes reporting that does the same.
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 8mo ago
      > It appears that CBS sees equal airtime as a very serious threat to their programming. This seems very dubious given the recent ownership change of CBS and the lack of reason behind the decision. The point the parent comment brings up is that "equal airtime" requires that someone actually request to go on the show and be refused. There is no legitimate cover for CBS' decision as this did not occur. It seems incredibly likely to be one made in fear of political liability rather than legal.
- BirAdam 8mo ago
  I think you were downvoted for tone, but I think your general point is valid. I am sure, however, that we have some lawyer folks on HN. Hopefully one of them can weigh in on whether or not this is accurate interpretation of the law as it is currently written.
- outside1234 8mo ago
  This is obviously true. The real challenge here is that this rule is only going to applied to one party.
  - AnimalMuppet 8mo ago
    Well, see, the problem is that the race is currently at the primary election stage. So both candidates are Democrats. So, if you give coverage to one candidate, that is favoring that candidate over the other. That doesn't seem fair. But if you give both candidates air time, then you're giving air time to two Democratic candidates and zero Republican candidates. That can also be viewed as unfair (never mind that the Republican candidate is not in an election until November). The only other option is to give neither candidate air time. That results in a less-informed electorate, and that's not a good outcome either. All in all, the "give both candidates air time, even if they're both from the same party, as they will be in a primary" seems like the best answer, especially if it's applied to primary candidates from both parties. But it's not quite as straightforward a question as it appears at first glance.
    - pseudalopex 8mo ago
      Carr said they would not enforce the rule against right wing radio.
- jabroni_salad 8mo ago
  Alright, then apply the rule to talk radio as well.
- nicole_express 8mo ago
  They just now changed how they enforce the rules. Of course they have a legal pretense for their action; everyone has a legal pretense. These rules have generally not been enforced this broadly because the expectation is that they wouldn't actually stand up to First Amendment scrutiny, should it make it to the Supreme Court. Of course, CBS is at no risk of suing the administration if Paramount wants any chance of buying Warner, so in this case they can restrict as they please.
hexis 8mo ago
Could have just invited Ken Paxton if all he wanted to do was inform voters.
- apparent 8mo ago
  Dems haven't even had their primary yet. He'd have had to been open to all the other Dems, before even getting to the Republicans.
josefritzishere 8mo ago
This is higly abusive. Talks shows have been generally considered exempt from the Equal Time provision since the Regan administration. It it was applied consistently Fox News is basically violating it 24 hours a day.
- apparent 8mo ago
  Fox News is doesn't use airwaves, so it's not subject to this requirement.
  - miltonlost 8mo ago
    Conservative talk radio hosts then. Still hypocritical and clear evidence for further politicalization by Carr
    - apparent 8mo ago
      Yeah, should apply there for sure. I wonder if Democratic politicians would want to go on conservative talk shows, though. My general understanding is that Republican politicians are more often refused speaking slots on non-Right media, whereas Democratic politicians don't want to go on Right media.
      - wrs 8mo ago
        You’re saying Republican politicians are demanding to be interviewed by Steven Colbert? And even if they were, that would matter? (I would think Mr. Colbert would love to have a bunch of R politicians lined up to skewer on his show.)
        apparent 8mo ago
        I don't recall ever saying anything about Colbert. I made a general statement ("my general understanding is...") about politicians on the right and left and their general interest in going on news shows hosted by non-co-partisans. Do you disagree with that general statement?
SimianSci 8mo ago
Conservatism has largely been unpopular outside of rural townships, and the nation continues to undergo a process of urbanization as young people continue to move to cities. Normally, a healthy response to this would be to realign and target a more popular set of messaging and policy objectives. Instead the American Right has decided instead that this popularity (and the reflection in media) is a threat to its ability to continue serving a shrinking pool of wealthy benefactors. It should come as no surprise that the moment they were handed the power, they began to push the boundaries of what is acceptable when it comes to censoring media they see as a threat. Republicanism doesnt work for anyone but the wealthy, it will do everything in its power here.
- apparent 8mo ago
  [flagged]
- atoav 8mo ago
  Well the problem I see with this is that the population means very little in terms of national politics in comparison to most modern democratic nations. So you can be California which in terms of population and GDP will surpass most of central America combined and it still just gets two representatives. Now I get that the idea here was to avoid a dictatorship of the majority that can just ignore smaller states, but the way it is now it is a dictatorship of the minority, even if you ignore all the blatant ways of voter disenfranchisement. Sorry to all Republicans on here, but if your party needs to prevent people from voting to win, that also hurts you. Ideally you'd want a party to have to listen to their voters. Gerrymandering, predicting voter behavior and throwing out the ones who might not vote for you are all the shameful behavior of traitors to democracy. This has to be stopped and punished on every political level, as long as you still have a say.
  - jjtheblunt 8mo ago
    > Sorry to all Republicans on here, but if your party needs to prevent people from voting to win, that also hurts you. Isn't their main assertion that only citizens should vote? (something like 80% of people claiming allegiance to both parties said the same, last i saw, but numbers surely fluctuate from poll to poll)
CGMthrowaway 8mo ago
This is how a country slides into oligarchy. Quiet threats, regulatory scrutiny, tax audits, license reviews aimed at TV networks and newspapers until they decide it’s safer to stay quiet. And once the media falls in line, you have to ask what else is being forced into compliance behind closed doors, long before the public realizes what’s happening. What's next? Protesters swept up under sweeping surveillance and detention policies, speech narrowed in the name of "public safety", certain narratives becoming untouchable, etc.
- outside1234 8mo ago
  This. We are in very serious trouble people.
  - rexpop 8mo ago
    What're you going to do about it?
- hypeatei 8mo ago
  You copy pasted this comment[0] then when I clicked reply it was slightly edited. What exactly are you doing? 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47050245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47050245
  - catapart 8mo ago
    based on this users comments in a similar story from earlier, this seems like a bot.
    - hypeatei 8mo ago
      Yeah, I think so too. I'm not sure why I'm getting downvoted. I wish HN showed an edit history because that was a 1:1 copy paste at first.
  - CGMthrowaway 8mo ago
    Had the wrong thing in my clipboard, my bad. Was writing the comment in notepad first
barcodehorse 8mo ago
I find the death of 2016 conservatism and the advent of the extremist, more violent and hateful republicanism very interesting. It's like how the minority of Left-leaning people who burn cars and shoot public speakers are what most on the Right see the entire democrat party as. Now the Right has their own form of that in those who scroll on Twitter and attack immigrants behind their backs. I feel like, within the next year or so, there will be a vast swath of former republicans who are so violently radicalized that they will do the same thing those protesting George Floyd's death in 2020 did. It's just interesting how cyclical it all is.
- beart 8mo ago
  I'm not sure this is a fair comparison. The radicals on the far-right control three branches of the federal government. The George Floyd protestors were barely able to influence their local boards.
- squarefoot 8mo ago
  > It's like how the minority of Left-leaning people who burn cars and shoot public speakers are what most on the Right see the entire democrat party as. That's the result of well known disinformation tactics by certain media in concert with police forces: wait or provoke a violent outburst in a otherwise peaceful protest, often triggered by carefully planned repetitive police charges, then be ready to film when protesters discharge their frustration against what they have nearby like shops windows and cars, make a enraging video out of it and show only that in prime time to families dining.
  - SpEd3Y 8mo ago
    Not saying this is the case, but I heard an argument made about this on the other side. Saying the ICE situation is manufactured by the Democratic party by not playing ball like they did in the Obama times. Instead they encourage protests and and "wait or provoke a violent outburst" that's "often triggered by carefully planned repetitive" tactics like blocking ICE vehicles "then be ready to film when" an inevitable violent act happens then "make a enraging video out of it and show only that in prime time to families dining". Again, not saying that's the case, I'm not from the US so I don't much care, but it's funny to me that both side accuse each other of the same strategy.
miki123211 8mo ago
This is why I find Social Media regulation to be so dangerous. We shouldn't give our[1] government too much leverage over any company that controls what people can say. If we do, we may be solving a very serious problem, but creating one which is even more serious. If the government can apply large fines to social media companies, and also has a large amount of discretion about which companies it prosecutes, it's very easy for them to make a deal where a company won't be prosecuted if they remove speech that the government doesn't like. [1] Use whichever definition of "our" you like, the point is equally valid regardless of country.
ChrisArchitect 8mo ago
[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47049426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47049426
snowwrestler 8mo ago
I think it’s funny that while GOP supporters are investing tens of $billions to take over popular broadcast and social media brands to privilege their point of view, Brendan Carr threatens to invoke the equal time rule, which would completely negate their structural advantage. This is kind of like when conservatives spent years wrapping their advocacy in the banner of free speech, and then Brendan Carr announced that free speech is over, actually, because Jimmy Kimmel was mean. Oops! Nevermind.
- pseudalopex 8mo ago
  > I think it’s funny that while GOP supporters are investing tens of $billions to take over popular broadcast and social media brands to privilege their point of view, Brendan Carr threatens to invoke the equal time rule, which would completely negate their structural advantage. Why assume the rule would be applied fairly? Carr said they would not enforce it against right wing radio.
  - snowwrestler 8mo ago
    It is unlikely Carr will be FCC chair past January 20, 2029. (If he makes it that long.) However, all those conservative billionaires will still own their media companies. Expanding the coverage of the equal time rule would hand the next Democratic administration a big club to swing at them. Hey maybe for his next act, Carr will revive the Fairness Doctrine that was repealed under Reagan.
- foogazi 8mo ago
  > which would completely negate their structural advantage. You think it’s going to be enforced against their side ? Read the room My favorite dictator quote: > To my friends everything, to my enemies the law
JohnTHaller 8mo ago
It's worth remembering that CBS is now run by a right-wing billionaire. It's the reason 60 Minutes stories that would anger the Republican administration keep getting pulled.

223 points by voxadam 8mo ago

Use publicly owned airwaves, expect to have to abide by the campaign finance rules. Can't just donate excellent coverage to just one candidate.

kgwxd 8mo ago
Doesn't apply to late night shows.
- nomel 8mo ago
  Reference? This says it now does (and parent is right): https://www.mediainstitute.org/2026/01/22/fcc-late-night-shows-may-not-be-exempt-from-equal-time-rule/ https://www.mediainstitute.org/2026/01/22/fcc-late-night-sho... To me, this seems reasonable, since I could imagine all the networks skirting the intent in any way possible.
  - SpicyLemonZest 8mo ago
    This notice was published as a flagrant act of unlawful retaliation against late night shows for criticizing the sitting President. I think it's misleading to present it as a legitimate action, even if the Trump regime might attempt to enforce it and courts might uphold that enforcement. As the only non-regime FCC commissioner remaining has pointed out, the FCC specifically did not engage in the actual rulemaking procedure that's normally required to change these rules, because if they had their retaliatory motivation would have been a huge obstacle.
    - nomel 8mo ago
      > I think it's misleading to present it as a legitimate action Legitimate or not, the policy is what's there now, until challenged. You agree with that: > might attempt to enforce it and courts might uphold that enforcement And, clearly, so do their lawyers.
      - SpicyLemonZest 8mo ago
        The problem is that the policy will not be challenged if people accept it as legitimate. Talk shows aren't common enough or important enough that a challenge is guaranteed to come. And so the ratchet of authoritarian takeover advances a little bit further, as Donald Trump works towards his quite explicit goal of making it illegal for the media to say bad things about him.
- apparent 8mo ago
  Doesn't apply to news shows. The key question is whether late night shows are news shows.
dabinat 8mo ago
It just says they have to give equal time, not prevent someone from coming on the show completely. But the other candidates have to make a request to be included and no-one made any requests. Don’t act like this FCC’s actions should be taken in good faith.
- nomel 8mo ago
  > not prevent someone from coming on the show completely. No, they weren't prevented from coming on, as the article poorly points out. It appears that CBS sees equal airtime as a very serious threat to their programming. This makes complete sense, if you've watched an intentionally biased show like Colbert. edit: downvotes, please explain. This is the stated reason from TFA!: > "CC Chairman Brendan Carr recently issued a warning to late-night and daytime talk shows that they may no longer qualify for the bona fide news exemption to the equal-time rule, and subsequently opened an investigation into ABC’s The View after an interview with Talarico." > Colbert played audio of a recent Carr interview in which the FCC chairman said, “If [Jimmy] Kimmel and Colbert want to continue to do their programming, they don’t want to have to comply with this requirement, then they can go to a cable channel or a podcast or a streaming service and that’s fine.” > Colbert said he “decided to take Brendan Carr’s advice” and interviewed Talarico for a segment posted on his show’s YouTube channel. Help me understand if I'm missing something here. And the show is, clearly, intentionally biased. It targets a left wing audience, with its jokes specifically written around that (always has, that's fine), and nearly exclusively, has left wing political guests.
  - JohnTHaller 8mo ago
    CBS is now run by a right-wing billionaire. The equal time rule is being used as cover to kill an interview that the Republican administration doesn't like. Same way CBS keeps killing 60 Minutes reporting that does the same.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 8mo ago
    > It appears that CBS sees equal airtime as a very serious threat to their programming. This seems very dubious given the recent ownership change of CBS and the lack of reason behind the decision. The point the parent comment brings up is that "equal airtime" requires that someone actually request to go on the show and be refused. There is no legitimate cover for CBS' decision as this did not occur. It seems incredibly likely to be one made in fear of political liability rather than legal.
BirAdam 8mo ago
I think you were downvoted for tone, but I think your general point is valid. I am sure, however, that we have some lawyer folks on HN. Hopefully one of them can weigh in on whether or not this is accurate interpretation of the law as it is currently written.
outside1234 8mo ago
This is obviously true. The real challenge here is that this rule is only going to applied to one party.
- AnimalMuppet 8mo ago
  Well, see, the problem is that the race is currently at the primary election stage. So both candidates are Democrats. So, if you give coverage to one candidate, that is favoring that candidate over the other. That doesn't seem fair. But if you give both candidates air time, then you're giving air time to two Democratic candidates and zero Republican candidates. That can also be viewed as unfair (never mind that the Republican candidate is not in an election until November). The only other option is to give neither candidate air time. That results in a less-informed electorate, and that's not a good outcome either. All in all, the "give both candidates air time, even if they're both from the same party, as they will be in a primary" seems like the best answer, especially if it's applied to primary candidates from both parties. But it's not quite as straightforward a question as it appears at first glance.
  - pseudalopex 8mo ago
    Carr said they would not enforce the rule against right wing radio.
jabroni_salad 8mo ago
Alright, then apply the rule to talk radio as well.
nicole_express 8mo ago
They just now changed how they enforce the rules. Of course they have a legal pretense for their action; everyone has a legal pretense. These rules have generally not been enforced this broadly because the expectation is that they wouldn't actually stand up to First Amendment scrutiny, should it make it to the Supreme Court. Of course, CBS is at no risk of suing the administration if Paramount wants any chance of buying Warner, so in this case they can restrict as they please.

hexis 8mo ago

Could have just invited Ken Paxton if all he wanted to do was inform voters.

apparent 8mo ago
Dems haven't even had their primary yet. He'd have had to been open to all the other Dems, before even getting to the Republicans.

josefritzishere 8mo ago

This is higly abusive. Talks shows have been generally considered exempt from the Equal Time provision since the Regan administration. It it was applied consistently Fox News is basically violating it 24 hours a day.

apparent 8mo ago
Fox News is doesn't use airwaves, so it's not subject to this requirement.
- miltonlost 8mo ago
  Conservative talk radio hosts then. Still hypocritical and clear evidence for further politicalization by Carr
  - apparent 8mo ago
    Yeah, should apply there for sure. I wonder if Democratic politicians would want to go on conservative talk shows, though. My general understanding is that Republican politicians are more often refused speaking slots on non-Right media, whereas Democratic politicians don't want to go on Right media.
    - wrs 8mo ago
      You’re saying Republican politicians are demanding to be interviewed by Steven Colbert? And even if they were, that would matter? (I would think Mr. Colbert would love to have a bunch of R politicians lined up to skewer on his show.)
      - apparent 8mo ago
        I don't recall ever saying anything about Colbert. I made a general statement ("my general understanding is...") about politicians on the right and left and their general interest in going on news shows hosted by non-co-partisans. Do you disagree with that general statement?

SimianSci 8mo ago

Conservatism has largely been unpopular outside of rural townships, and the nation continues to undergo a process of urbanization as young people continue to move to cities. Normally, a healthy response to this would be to realign and target a more popular set of messaging and policy objectives. Instead the American Right has decided instead that this popularity (and the reflection in media) is a threat to its ability to continue serving a shrinking pool of wealthy benefactors. It should come as no surprise that the moment they were handed the power, they began to push the boundaries of what is acceptable when it comes to censoring media they see as a threat. Republicanism doesnt work for anyone but the wealthy, it will do everything in its power here.

apparent 8mo ago
[flagged]
atoav 8mo ago
Well the problem I see with this is that the population means very little in terms of national politics in comparison to most modern democratic nations. So you can be California which in terms of population and GDP will surpass most of central America combined and it still just gets two representatives. Now I get that the idea here was to avoid a dictatorship of the majority that can just ignore smaller states, but the way it is now it is a dictatorship of the minority, even if you ignore all the blatant ways of voter disenfranchisement. Sorry to all Republicans on here, but if your party needs to prevent people from voting to win, that also hurts you. Ideally you'd want a party to have to listen to their voters. Gerrymandering, predicting voter behavior and throwing out the ones who might not vote for you are all the shameful behavior of traitors to democracy. This has to be stopped and punished on every political level, as long as you still have a say.
- jjtheblunt 8mo ago
  > Sorry to all Republicans on here, but if your party needs to prevent people from voting to win, that also hurts you. Isn't their main assertion that only citizens should vote? (something like 80% of people claiming allegiance to both parties said the same, last i saw, but numbers surely fluctuate from poll to poll)

CGMthrowaway 8mo ago

This is how a country slides into oligarchy. Quiet threats, regulatory scrutiny, tax audits, license reviews aimed at TV networks and newspapers until they decide it’s safer to stay quiet. And once the media falls in line, you have to ask what else is being forced into compliance behind closed doors, long before the public realizes what’s happening. What's next? Protesters swept up under sweeping surveillance and detention policies, speech narrowed in the name of "public safety", certain narratives becoming untouchable, etc.

outside1234 8mo ago
This. We are in very serious trouble people.
- rexpop 8mo ago
  What're you going to do about it?
hypeatei 8mo ago
You copy pasted this comment[0] then when I clicked reply it was slightly edited. What exactly are you doing? 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47050245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47050245
- catapart 8mo ago
  based on this users comments in a similar story from earlier, this seems like a bot.
  - hypeatei 8mo ago
    Yeah, I think so too. I'm not sure why I'm getting downvoted. I wish HN showed an edit history because that was a 1:1 copy paste at first.
- CGMthrowaway 8mo ago
  Had the wrong thing in my clipboard, my bad. Was writing the comment in notepad first

barcodehorse 8mo ago

I find the death of 2016 conservatism and the advent of the extremist, more violent and hateful republicanism very interesting. It's like how the minority of Left-leaning people who burn cars and shoot public speakers are what most on the Right see the entire democrat party as. Now the Right has their own form of that in those who scroll on Twitter and attack immigrants behind their backs. I feel like, within the next year or so, there will be a vast swath of former republicans who are so violently radicalized that they will do the same thing those protesting George Floyd's death in 2020 did. It's just interesting how cyclical it all is.

beart 8mo ago
I'm not sure this is a fair comparison. The radicals on the far-right control three branches of the federal government. The George Floyd protestors were barely able to influence their local boards.
squarefoot 8mo ago
> It's like how the minority of Left-leaning people who burn cars and shoot public speakers are what most on the Right see the entire democrat party as. That's the result of well known disinformation tactics by certain media in concert with police forces: wait or provoke a violent outburst in a otherwise peaceful protest, often triggered by carefully planned repetitive police charges, then be ready to film when protesters discharge their frustration against what they have nearby like shops windows and cars, make a enraging video out of it and show only that in prime time to families dining.
- SpEd3Y 8mo ago
  Not saying this is the case, but I heard an argument made about this on the other side. Saying the ICE situation is manufactured by the Democratic party by not playing ball like they did in the Obama times. Instead they encourage protests and and "wait or provoke a violent outburst" that's "often triggered by carefully planned repetitive" tactics like blocking ICE vehicles "then be ready to film when" an inevitable violent act happens then "make a enraging video out of it and show only that in prime time to families dining". Again, not saying that's the case, I'm not from the US so I don't much care, but it's funny to me that both side accuse each other of the same strategy.

miki123211 8mo ago

This is why I find Social Media regulation to be so dangerous. We shouldn't give our[1] government too much leverage over any company that controls what people can say. If we do, we may be solving a very serious problem, but creating one which is even more serious. If the government can apply large fines to social media companies, and also has a large amount of discretion about which companies it prosecutes, it's very easy for them to make a deal where a company won't be prosecuted if they remove speech that the government doesn't like. [1] Use whichever definition of "our" you like, the point is equally valid regardless of country.

ChrisArchitect 8mo ago

[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47049426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47049426

snowwrestler 8mo ago

I think it’s funny that while GOP supporters are investing tens of $billions to take over popular broadcast and social media brands to privilege their point of view, Brendan Carr threatens to invoke the equal time rule, which would completely negate their structural advantage. This is kind of like when conservatives spent years wrapping their advocacy in the banner of free speech, and then Brendan Carr announced that free speech is over, actually, because Jimmy Kimmel was mean. Oops! Nevermind.

pseudalopex 8mo ago
> I think it’s funny that while GOP supporters are investing tens of $billions to take over popular broadcast and social media brands to privilege their point of view, Brendan Carr threatens to invoke the equal time rule, which would completely negate their structural advantage. Why assume the rule would be applied fairly? Carr said they would not enforce it against right wing radio.
- snowwrestler 8mo ago
  It is unlikely Carr will be FCC chair past January 20, 2029. (If he makes it that long.) However, all those conservative billionaires will still own their media companies. Expanding the coverage of the equal time rule would hand the next Democratic administration a big club to swing at them. Hey maybe for his next act, Carr will revive the Fairness Doctrine that was repealed under Reagan.
foogazi 8mo ago
> which would completely negate their structural advantage. You think it’s going to be enforced against their side ? Read the room My favorite dictator quote: > To my friends everything, to my enemies the law

JohnTHaller 8mo ago

It's worth remembering that CBS is now run by a right-wing billionaire. It's the reason 60 Minutes stories that would anger the Republican administration keep getting pulled.