Two days after CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert said he was barred from airing an interview with Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D) because of the network’s legal concerns about flouting the FCC’s equal-time rule, the commission’s chair, Brendan Carr, defended himself against allegations of censorship.
“There was no censorship here at all,” Carr told reporters at a Wednesday news conference. CBS, he said, had a clear path to regulatory compliance by affording interviews to Talarico’s rivals in his primary race to become the next U.S. senator from Texas.
Carr blasted Talarico, saying that the 36-year-old politician “took advantage” of news media “for the purpose of raising money and getting clicks.” He remarked that the press coverage of the incident was “a perfect encapsulation of why the American people have more trust in gas station sushi than they do in the national news media.”
Anna M. Gomez, the only Democrat on the FCC, said Carr’s investigations and threats toward media companies had led to corporate appeasement. “What you are seeing is using and weaponizing our enforcement process to pressure broadcasters to self-censor,” Gomez told reporters, speaking after Carr at the Wednesday news conference.
Colbert laid into executives at CBS and its parent company, Paramount Skydance, for the second night running Tuesday, rebuking his bosses for their handling of the interview.
In an on-air segment, Colbert suggested the network was caving to pressure by trying to apply the FCC’s equal-time rule, which requires broadcasters to provide equal opportunity to political candidates but has traditionally not applied to news and talk-show interviews.
Colbert was already set to depart from the network in May, after CBS said over the summer it will cancel “The Late Show” for financial reasons.
CBS pushed back against Colbert’s accusation that it blocked the Talarico interview in a statement Tuesday, suggesting its executives hadn’t prohibited the interview but instead had informed Colbert of legal guidance that it could trigger the FCC equal-time rule.
Last month, the FCC said it would require network talk shows to offer equal airtime to all candidates intending to run for the same office, changing course on a long-running policy and resurfacing free-speech concerns.
Colbert’s interview with Talarico was posted on the show’s YouTube channel, where it has so far received about 6 million views.
The CBS statement rankled Colbert. In his show Tuesday, he told his audience that he had never before been asked to abide by the equal-time rule in more than two decades of hosting late-night shows. (Colbert’s last show, “The Colbert Report,” aired on the cable channel Comedy Central, which like CBS is currently owned by Paramount Skydance. The FCC only regulates content on broadcast TV, not on cable.)
“I was ready to let the whole thing go, until a few hours ago,” he said, holding up CBS’s statement. “This is a surprisingly small piece of paper considering how many butts it’s trying to cover,” he said, also criticizing the company for publishing it without consulting him first.
“For the record, I’m not mad. I really don’t want an adversarial relationship with the network,” he continued. “I’m just so surprised that this giant global corporation would not stand up to these bullies.”
Colbert then likened the statement to dog poop, crumpling the paper and scooping it into a bag to audience cheers.
Neither CBS nor Paramount Skydance immediately responded to emailed requests for comment early Wednesday.
In the past year, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has remolded the federal agency into a speech enforcer tackling perceived liberal bias in the media industry. Under his leadership, the FCC has investigated media companies, threatening those that do not abide by rarely enforced rules and invoking little-known policies, such as its controversial “news distortion” policy.
Last year, Carr drew bipartisan criticism for his comments suggesting the FCC could take action against another late-night host, Jimmy Kimmel, for his comments in the wake of the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
In the public notice issued by the FCC last month, the agency asserted that daytime and nighttime talk shows would have to apply for exemptions to the equal-time rule for each program. “Importantly, the FCC has not been presented with any evidence that the interview portion of any late night or daytime television talk show program on air presently would qualify for the bona fide news exemption,” it said.
At the time, Gomez called the notice “misleading.” On Tuesday, she suggested the FCC did not have the legal authority “to pressure broadcasters for political purposes.”
Last summer, the FCC gave a green light to an $8 billion deal for David Ellison’s Skydance to buy CBS parent company Paramount.
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