The context for this is that in January, the FCC issued a public notice saying that daytime and nighttime talk shows would have to apply for exemptions to the equal-time rule for each of their programs. “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,” the FCC’s notice read.
Well, duh. I’m stunned that this wasn’t already the rule, but then Democrats have ruled the roost for all but five years out of the last 18. The Left had its embedded Deep State agents at the controls in Trump’s first term, and late night shows were not overtly political until Jay Leno and the old guard exited in 2014. However Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers turned late night TV into ongoing Democratic campaign propaganda during the 2024 campaign. Moreover, the blatant late night attempt on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” to pull Kamala Harris over the finish line was too outrageous to ignore.
Colbert and Talerico threw a tantrum when the latter’s interview was blocked. They claimed that CBS was engaging in censorship. They hinted that Trump was behind the prohibition, which was especially silly: Talerico is running against Trump-hating Jasmine Crockett in her district’s Democratic primary. Why would Trump want to silence her opposition?
CBS defended itself and explained that Colbert, as usual, was full of baloney.
“‘The Late Show’ was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Rep. James Talarico,” a spokesperson for the network said in a statement. “The show was provided 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. ‘The Late Show’ decided to present the interview through its YouTube channel with on-air promotion on the broadcast rather than potentially providing the equal-time options.”
Dim, biased and incompetent as he is, even CNN’s unethical media ethics watchdog Brian Stelter had to admit Colbert had no metaphorical leg to stand on:
Naturally, because the sun rises and the world turns, Anna M. Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democrat, wrote that CBS’s decision is an example of “corporate capitulation in the face of this Administration’s broader campaign to censor and control speech” and said that the FCC has “no lawful authority to pressure broadcasters for political purposes.”
She’s lying, of course. The “equal time” provision was challenged and ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court long ago. Democrats are happy to take advantage of it when they issue televised rebuttals to Trump’s State of the Union speeches. The jig is up for Democrats in this area in part because CBS’s “60 Minutes” was caught red-handed trying to manipulate the 2024 election with its last minute deceptive edit of a Kamala Harris interview to make the most inarticulate and dim-witted. Democrats thought they would have free support for their candidates courtesy of the left-biased late night shows forever.
That Colbert’s accusation makes no sense logically, legally, ethically, factually or politically doesn’t matter; Tolerico is trying to blame his interview being dinged on Trump anyway, linking to the YouTube version of the interview and writing on “X”: “This is the interview Donald Trump didn’t want you to see.”
Because the President is such a big Jasmine Crockett fan.
The Washington Post, still biased and untrustworthy after its recent gutting, does its best to try to spin this embarrassing episode to accuse the Trump Administration of censorship. It is an ethics easy call to insist that when entertainment shows engage in candidate-specific propaganda before primaries and elections, it be regarded as contributions in kind and treated accordingly. But the Axis of Unethical Conduct, as we should know by now, isn’t very good at ethics.
Ethics Alarms 
Boy, am I behind the times. I assumed the equal time rule was dead forty years ago. It’s been ignored and buried for a long time.
And didn’t Colbert get his start doing a non-stop impersonation of an angry, strident blowhard politician? Now he is an angry, strident, blowhard politician? Whew. Talk about clown nose on and clown nose off.
Exactly. This isn’t parody anymore; it’s advocacy. These guys relied on the Jester’s Excuse far too many times and got away with it. Now, like spoiled kids who are being “no” for the first time in their lives, they’re throwing a fit and claiming it’s not fair.
I assumed the equal time rule was dead forty years ago.
I think you are referring to the fairness doctrine here. Wikipedia has the following to say about this:
“The fairness doctrine of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) policy in effect from 1949 to 1987 requiring broadcast licensees to present balanced coverage of controversial public issues. It mandated that stations provide contrasting viewpoints, rather than equal time, on important topics. The FCC repealed it in 1987, arguing it discouraged coverage of controversial issues, a decision often cited as accelerating partisan media.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine
The abolishment of this doctrine allowed conservative talk radio to flourish, with Rush Limbaugh as the most prominent example.
The fairness doctrine was often used to harass opponents on the radio. Bill Ruder (Ass Sec of Commerce in the Kennedy Administration) stated “Our massive strategy [in the early 1960s] was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters and hope that the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue. “
Former Kennedy FCC staffer Martin Firestone wrote a memo to the DNC on strategies to combat small rural radio stations unfriendly to Democrats:
“The right-wingers operate on a strictly cash basis and it is for this reason that they are carried by so many small stations. Were our efforts to be continued on a year-round basis, we would find that many of these stations would consider the broadcasts of these programs bothersome and burdensome (especially if they are ultimately required to give us free time) and would start dropping the programs from their broadcast schedule.”
Wanna see how an extreme progressive (aka regressive) leftist is portraying (aka spining) this particular story?
Behold, here’s what I have to call an unhinged hate filled tirade…
The First Amendment Doesn’t Need Donald Trump As A Babysitter
Yup folks, for that author this is all about the “fascist actions” of a hookers sexual deviant john, Donald Trump, and his racist “Brown-Shirts” suppressing free speech they don’t like. How’d you like how the author threw that little racism dig, “so, there is something Brown they love”? I knew there would be some Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) sufferers crawling out from under their rocks to spread their false narratives regarding this, but holy shit!
Since this author recently started his blog on a brand new WordPress site, I did try to submit a comment to the post to see what would happen with this “new” blog, but my comment immediately went into moderation…
My guess is he won’t allow this comment to be posted, but to be completely fair, he has surprised me a few times in the past.
I saw Stelter’s post on X yesterday and thought, for a minute, if I’d stumbled across a Bizarro-World account for him.
Isn’t this a primary election contest between Crockett and Talarico, who are running to be the Democrat US Senate candidate from Texas? Why would the Trump Administration even care who is on the March 2026 ballot to run against John Cornyn? For that matter, why would Cornyn care? Cornyn has a couple of challengers but looks to be the favored candidate to retain the Republican nomination. I would think Cornyn would welcome a challenge by Crockett because it would be fun to watch him slaughter her with her own ineptitude and dumb statements.
Also, isn’t Colbert being just a bit racisty by not wanting to air the Talarico segment because he would have to give the same time to Crockett, who we all know identifies as a historically underepresented and disenfranchised minority?
jvb
you can’t use logic to explain behavior if a Leftist cockholster