Gee, what a surprise. Democrats don’t like the Federal Communications Commission “Equal Time” rule applying to non-news shows when hey try to influence elections.
The Communications Act of 1934, once aimed at radio, now mostly applied to television, includes a provision regarding coverage of political candidates. If a station gives airtime to one candidate, then the same station must offer comparable time to other candidates competing in an approaching primary or election. Regarding campaign ads, a station selling airtime to one candidate also has to offer to sell the same amount of time to other candidates for the same office. Exceptions to this rule include newscasts, “bona fide” interview programs, and coverage of live events or documentaries. Candidates appearing in non-news, entertainment programming near to elections now trigger the provision.
As they should.
CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert, on the way out already from his all-Democratic-cheer-leading-all-the-time show, attacked his own network this week after he was stopped from airing an interview with Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D), a U.S. Senate candidate, because of the FCC ’s equal-time rule.
“You know who is not one of my guests tonight?” Colbert asked his audience. “That’s Texas state representative James Talarico. He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast.” On cue, his partisan studio audience booed.
“Then I was told, in some uncertain terms, that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on,” Colbert continued. “And because my network clearly does not want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this.”
Boy, isn’t he funny? My sides ache from laughing! No wonder Colbert is regarded as a comic genius. Admit it, the guy is hilarious.
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.”
Right you are, Cees! Absolut! I confused or conflated the two. Super interesting contextual notes you’ve dug up. Thanks.
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’ve gotta give the author I linked to above credit where credit is due, he posted my comment and we had a brief conversation.
See? There is hope.
UPDATE: Well the conversation I thought we were having ended abruptly.
I posted my original comment (above) then Gregory Humphrey posted the following reply…
My thought was he was willing to have a conversation so I posted a reply to his comment and linked back to this Ethics Alarms post…
My reply to his comment posted immediately and then a few hours later Humphrey deleted my reply. My initial thought was that maybe he didn’t like me posting an external link and the graphic, so I posted the following edited version…
That comment was immediately deleted, but not before I got a screen shot. It appears that Humphrey is back to his old active censorship pattern, especially when it contradicts his opinion.
I specifically chose not to address any of the hateful things that Humphrey wrote in his tirade and kept it focused on the actions of the network and the political advocacy patterns that I’ve seen. I tried, I really tried.
It’s really sad that people, like Humphrey, choose to sensor the way they do. It’s a pattern that I’ve seen so many times from extreme progressives, aka regressives, that I firmly believe that it’s part of their core ideology to limit opposing viewpoints to their narrative, it’s truly anti-American.
Well again, I’ve gotta give Humphrey credit where credit is due, he posted the latter of my two comments I shared above. He wrote that the comment was in spam.
After reading Jonathan Turley’s post this morning I posted this on Humphrey’s site…
We’ll see if he allows this one to be posted, it might be too much for him to allow others to see, especially after the hateful BS that he wrote in his post that was spurred on by him completely swallowing all of Colbert’s story.
It appears that I swallowed the core of Colbert’s story too, I got the impression that the FCC had contacted them to give them a “heads up”, but now I understand that the FCC didn’t do anything and the suppression rhetoric about the FCC and CBS lawyers was all a baldfaced lie.
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
Law & Order … it’s about damn time!