WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 (Reuters)—The chair of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday denied the government had censored CBS “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert from airing an interview with a Democrat U.S. Senate candidate and confirmed that the FCC is investigating ABC’s “The View.”
FCC Chair Brendan Carr said Colbert could have run his interview with Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate, if the “Late Show” complied with equal time rules by airing interviews with competing Democrats or choosing not to air the interview in Texas. Talarico said President Donald Trump’s FCC had tried to censor the interview and “banned” him from the broadcast.
The Republican-led FCC said last month that daytime and late-night TV talk shows are no longer considered “bona fide” news programs that are exempt from requirements to give equal airtime to views of opposing candidates. For decades, talk shows had been exempt from those rules.
Colbert posted his Talarico interview on YouTube, where the video had been viewed more than 6 million times as of Wednesday afternoon.
“There was no censorship here at all,” Carr said. “Every single broadcaster in this country has an obligation to be responsible for the programming that they choose to air, and they’re responsible whether it complies with FCC rules or not, and it doesn’t, and those individual broadcasters are also going to have a potential liability.”
Carr also confirmed that the FCC had opened an enforcement action into whether the ABC daytime talk show violated equal time rules after an earlier interview with Talarico.
On Monday, Colbert said the network’s lawyers barred him from airing an interview with Talarico. Colbert noted that the FCC issued new guidance in January that said daytime and late-night talk shows were not exempt from equal time rules for candidate interviews.
“Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV, because all Trump does is watch TV,” Colbert said on Monday.
Democrat FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez criticized the guidance and said the agency was violating the free speech rights of broadcasters.
“The FCC has no lawful authority to pressure broadcasters for political purposes or to create a climate that chills free expression,” she said.
Trump has repeatedly pushed Carr to take action against U.S. broadcasters and criticized networks for what he views as one-sided coverage.
On Tuesday, CBS said it offered “legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and presented options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled.”
Carr responded to Colbert’s criticism, saying the late-night host had “what he probably views as a long and distinguished career in the limelight, sees that that limelight is fading, is coming to an end. That’s got to be a difficult time for him. … That doesn’t change the facts of what happened here.”
Reporting by David Shepardson, Editing by Franklin Paul and David Gregorio