The Trump administration is opening a new front against late-night comedy, announcing plans to enforce long-dormant rules on appearances by political candidates on network talk shows.
Under new guidance released on Wednesday, the Federal Communications Commission warned that entertainment-oriented talk shows carried on local television stations were required to offer candidates vying for the same office equal airtime.
The guidance was clearly aimed at the late-night hosts who frequently anger President Trump — Jimmy Kimmel of ABC, Stephen Colbert of CBS and Seth Meyers of NBC — and have in turn drawn scrutiny from the F.C.C. chairman, Brendan Carr. But it would also cover daytime talk shows including another Trump target, “The View.”
The guidance addresses longstanding conservative complaints that the late-night shows have tilted too far to the left and are far more likely to have Democrats than Republicans as guests. It is in keeping with Mr. Carr’s yearlong campaign to use old and largely un-enforced media regulations, known as the “public interest standard,” to crack down on the major networks for perceived bias.
In a statement, the F.C.C.’s lone Democratic commissioner, Anna Gomez, called the new guidance “an escalation in this F.C.C.’s ongoing campaign to censor and control speech.” She added: “Broadcasters should not feel pressured to water down, sanitize, or avoid critical coverage out of fear of regulatory retaliation.”
A conservative group that has led in bringing formal complaints at the F.C.C., the Center for American Rights, hailed the F.C.C. announcement; media experts on both sides of the ideological spectrum said it would make it easier for the group, and others, to bring complaints against the late-night hosts and “The View.”
The guidance involves a “public interest” requirement that stations give rival candidates for office equal opportunities to buy ad time and appear on their airwaves. “Bona fide” news programming such as the evening newscasts is exempt from those rules.
“This major announcement from the FCC should stop one-sided left-wing entertainment shows masquerading as ‘bona fide news,’” Daniel Suhr, the president of the Center for American Rights, said on X.
For the past two decades, the broadcast industry has taken as a given that interviews with candidates on entertainment talk shows fell into the same category. That view was solidified by a 2006 F.C.C. determination that interviews on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” counted as bona fide news. The F.C.C. took no action when the other major network talk shows treated it as a broad exemption.
In its new guidance, the F.C.C. alerted broadcasters that talk shows were not broadly exempt. As Mr. Carr put it in a message on X on Wednesday, “For years, legacy TV networks assumed that their late night & daytime talk shows qualify as ‘bona fide news’ programs — even when motivated by purely partisan political purposes.” He added: “Today, the FCC reminded them of their obligation to provide all candidates with equal opportunities.”
Talk shows that want to have political candidates on as guests in an election year would have to petition the F.C.C. for an exemption — or give an equivalent amount of free airtime to the candidates’ opponents. And, it indicated, it would not grant exemptions lightly, basing decisions on whether it determined that the show in question was motivated “by partisan purposes.”
Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a longtime public interest lawyer, said the intent seemed to be to “trim the sails of certain talk shows” and induce a chilling effect; talk shows may be inclined to think twice before booking political candidates in election years altogether.
But he also said there could be an unintended consequence — by raising the question of whether conservative talk show hosts on radio, which falls under the same law, would have to provide equal time to political candidates, too.
Jim Rutenberg is a writer at large for The Times and The New York Times Magazine and writes most often about media and politics.
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