Stephen Colbert says CBS forbid interview of Democrat because of FCC threat (arstechnica.com)
160 points by voxadam 3 hours ago
SimianSci 2 hours ago
Conservatism has largely been unpopular outside of rural townships, and the nation continues to undergo a process of urbanization as young people continue to move to cities. Normally, a healthy response to this would be to realign and target a more popular set of messaging and policy objectives. Instead the American Right has decided instead that this popularity (and the reflection in media) is a threat to its ability to continue serving a shrinking pool of wealthy benefactors.
It should come as no surprise that the moment they were handed the power, they began to push the boundaries of what is acceptable when it comes to censoring media they see as a threat. Republicanism doesnt work for anyone but the wealthy, it will do everything in its power here.
bitshiftfaced 18 minutes ago
People who responded as "very conservative/conservative" was 36% in 1992 and 37% in 2024. https://news.gallup.com/poll/655190/political-parties-histor...
"Very liberal/liberal" has increased though (at the expense of moderates).
snowwrestler an hour ago
> It should come as no surprise that the moment they were handed the power, they began to push the boundaries of what is acceptable when it comes to censoring media they see as a threat.
To be clear, they were “handed power” by decisively winning a national election, which sort of undercuts your opening statement about how unpopular they are.
meowface an hour ago
While I agree with much of what you say, there are a lot of urban, educated, socially left, economically right people (including myself) who complicate some of this analysis. Many economically right-wing people believe a free market is the most effective and helpful path to improve the standard of living for the working class and the poor. ("Progressive neoliberal social democracy", one might call it.)
The issues with Republicans right now go far, far, far beyond "they care more about the wealthy than the poor" (though that is definitely one of their core problems). They're basically destroying the rule of law, the country's internal and international reputation and credibility, all of our most important institutions, our ability to discern what is true, our sense of decency, our civil liberties, our basic respect of human rights... The class stuff is secondary or tertiary to the bigger issues, in my opinion.
JohnTHaller an hour ago
Republicans are also the party of regulatory capture, not free markets.
RickJWagner an hour ago
The GOP won the popular vote, all the swing states, and control of both houses of congress and the White House in the last election.
Hard to do that on just rural townships.
numbers_guy an hour ago
Conservatism is a set of political principles and values, which somebody like Trump overtly does not possess, and never did. The whole Republican party feels like a country wide gaslighting operation at this point. They claim to be conservative and Christian, but are clearly neither.
atoav 2 hours ago
Well the problem I see with this is that the population means very little in terms of national politics in comparison to most modern democratic nations.
So you can be California which in terms of population and GDP will surpass most of central America combined and it still just gets two representatives. Now I get that the idea here was to avoid a dictatorship of the majority that can just ignore smaller states, but the way it is now it is a dictatorship of the minority, even if you ignore all the blatant ways of voter disenfranchisement.
Sorry to all Republicans on here, but if your party needs to prevent people from voting to win, that also hurts you. Ideally you'd want a party to have to listen to their voters. Gerrymandering, predicting voter behavior and throwing out the ones who might not vote for you are all the shameful behavior of traitors to democracy.
This has to be stopped and punished on every political level, as long as you still have a say.
jjtheblunt an hour ago
> Sorry to all Republicans on here, but if your party needs to prevent people from voting to win, that also hurts you.
Isn't their main assertion that only citizens should vote?
(something like 80% of people claiming allegiance to both parties said the same, last i saw, but numbers surely fluctuate from poll to poll)
filoeleven an hour ago
jmyeet an hour ago
atoav an hour ago
CGMthrowaway an hour ago
>you can be California which in terms of population and GDP will surpass most of central America combined and it still just gets two representatives
Doesn't California have 54 reps, out of 485? And 90 out of ~800 Article III judges (lifetime appointment). It also collects $858 billion a year in state and local taxes that it gets to do mostly what it wants with
atmavatar 24 minutes ago
AshleyGrant an hour ago
miki123211 2 hours ago
This is why I find Social Media regulation to be so dangerous.
We shouldn't give our[1] government too much leverage over any company that controls what people can say. If we do, we may be solving a very serious problem, but creating one which is even more serious. If the government can apply large fines to social media companies, and also has a large amount of discretion about which companies it prosecutes, it's very easy for them to make a deal where a company won't be prosecuted if they remove speech that the government doesn't like.
[1] Use whichever definition of "our" you like, the point is equally valid regardless of country.
snowwrestler an hour ago
I think it’s funny that while GOP supporters are investing tens of $billions to take over popular broadcast and social media brands to privilege their point of view, Brendan Carr threatens to invoke the equal time rule, which would completely negate their structural advantage.
This is kind of like when conservatives spent years wrapping their advocacy in the banner of free speech, and then Brendan Carr announced that free speech is over, actually, because Jimmy Kimmel was mean. Oops! Nevermind.
pseudalopex 41 minutes ago
> I think it’s funny that while GOP supporters are investing tens of $billions to take over popular broadcast and social media brands to privilege their point of view, Brendan Carr threatens to invoke the equal time rule, which would completely negate their structural advantage.
Why assume the rule would be applied fairly? Carr said they would not enforce it against right wing radio.
josefritzishere 2 hours ago
This is higly abusive. Talks shows have been generally considered exempt from the Equal Time provision since the Regan administration. It it was applied consistently Fox News is basically violating it 24 hours a day.
apparent 2 hours ago
Fox News is doesn't use airwaves, so it's not subject to this requirement.
josefritzishere an hour ago
Fox News affiliates do, and the FCC also regulates cable TV, satillite, telephony and even internet (to different extents) so this could be construed to apply quite broadly.
miltonlost 2 hours ago
Conservative talk radio hosts then. Still hypocritical and clear evidence for further politicalization by Carr
apparent 2 hours ago
ChrisArchitect 2 hours ago
[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47049426
JohnTHaller an hour ago
It's worth remembering that CBS is now run by a right-wing billionaire. It's the reason 60 Minutes stories that would anger the Republican administration keep getting pulled.
CGMthrowaway 2 hours ago
This is how a country slides into oligarchy. Quiet threats, regulatory scrutiny, tax audits, license reviews aimed at TV networks and newspapers until they decide it’s safer to stay quiet. And once the media falls in line, you have to ask what else is being forced into compliance behind closed doors, long before the public realizes what’s happening. What's next? Protesters swept up under sweeping surveillance and detention policies, speech narrowed in the name of "public safety", certain narratives becoming untouchable, etc.
hypeatei 2 hours ago
You copy pasted this comment[0] then when I clicked reply it was slightly edited. What exactly are you doing?
CGMthrowaway 2 hours ago
Had the wrong thing in my clipboard, my bad. Was writing the comment in notepad first
catapart 2 hours ago
based on this users comments in a similar story from earlier, this seems like a bot.
hypeatei 2 hours ago
outside1234 2 hours ago
This. We are in very serious trouble people.
rexpop 2 hours ago
What're you going to do about it?
hexis 2 hours ago
Could have just invited Ken Paxton if all he wanted to do was inform voters.
apparent 2 hours ago
Dems haven't even had their primary yet. He'd have had to been open to all the other Dems, before even getting to the Republicans.
bobomonkey 3 hours ago
Use publicly owned airwaves, expect to have to abide by the campaign finance rules. Can't just donate excellent coverage to just one candidate.
dabinat 2 hours ago
It just says they have to give equal time, not prevent someone from coming on the show completely. But the other candidates have to make a request to be included and no-one made any requests.
Don’t act like this FCC’s actions should be taken in good faith.
nomel 2 hours ago
> not prevent someone from coming on the show completely.
No, they weren't prevented from coming on, as the article poorly points out. It appears that CBS sees equal airtime as a very serious threat to their programming. This makes complete sense, if you've watched an intentionally biased show like Colbert.
edit: downvotes, please explain. This is the stated reason from TFA!:
> "CC Chairman Brendan Carr recently issued a warning to late-night and daytime talk shows that they may no longer qualify for the bona fide news exemption to the equal-time rule, and subsequently opened an investigation into ABC’s The View after an interview with Talarico."
> Colbert played audio of a recent Carr interview in which the FCC chairman said, “If [Jimmy] Kimmel and Colbert want to continue to do their programming, they don’t want to have to comply with this requirement, then they can go to a cable channel or a podcast or a streaming service and that’s fine.”
> Colbert said he “decided to take Brendan Carr’s advice” and interviewed Talarico for a segment posted on his show’s YouTube channel.
Help me understand if I'm missing something here. And the show is, clearly, intentionally biased. It targets a left wing audience, with its jokes specifically written around that (always has, that's fine), and nearly exclusively, has left wing political guests.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 42 minutes ago
JohnTHaller an hour ago
jabroni_salad 2 hours ago
Alright, then apply the rule to talk radio as well.
nicole_express 2 hours ago
They just now changed how they enforce the rules. Of course they have a legal pretense for their action; everyone has a legal pretense.
These rules have generally not been enforced this broadly because the expectation is that they wouldn't actually stand up to First Amendment scrutiny, should it make it to the Supreme Court. Of course, CBS is at no risk of suing the administration if Paramount wants any chance of buying Warner, so in this case they can restrict as they please.
outside1234 2 hours ago
This is obviously true. The real challenge here is that this rule is only going to applied to one party.
AnimalMuppet an hour ago
Well, see, the problem is that the race is currently at the primary election stage. So both candidates are Democrats.
So, if you give coverage to one candidate, that is favoring that candidate over the other. That doesn't seem fair.
But if you give both candidates air time, then you're giving air time to two Democratic candidates and zero Republican candidates. That can also be viewed as unfair (never mind that the Republican candidate is not in an election until November).
The only other option is to give neither candidate air time. That results in a less-informed electorate, and that's not a good outcome either.
All in all, the "give both candidates air time, even if they're both from the same party, as they will be in a primary" seems like the best answer, especially if it's applied to primary candidates from both parties. But it's not quite as straightforward a question as it appears at first glance.
pseudalopex 38 minutes ago
kgwxd 2 hours ago
Doesn't apply to late night shows.
nomel 2 hours ago
Reference?
This says it now does (and parent is right): https://www.mediainstitute.org/2026/01/22/fcc-late-night-sho...
To me, this seems reasonable, since I could imagine all the networks skirting the intent in any way possible.
SpicyLemonZest 2 hours ago
apparent 2 hours ago
Doesn't apply to news shows. The key question is whether late night shows are news shows.
BirAdam 2 hours ago
I think you were downvoted for tone, but I think your general point is valid.
I am sure, however, that we have some lawyer folks on HN. Hopefully one of them can weigh in on whether or not this is accurate interpretation of the law as it is currently written.
barcodehorse 2 hours ago
I find the death of 2016 conservatism and the advent of the extremist, more violent and hateful republicanism very interesting. It's like how the minority of Left-leaning people who burn cars and shoot public speakers are what most on the Right see the entire democrat party as. Now the Right has their own form of that in those who scroll on Twitter and attack immigrants behind their backs. I feel like, within the next year or so, there will be a vast swath of former republicans who are so violently radicalized that they will do the same thing those protesting George Floyd's death in 2020 did. It's just interesting how cyclical it all is.
beart 2 hours ago
I'm not sure this is a fair comparison.
The radicals on the far-right control three branches of the federal government. The George Floyd protestors were barely able to influence their local boards.
squarefoot 2 hours ago
> It's like how the minority of Left-leaning people who burn cars and shoot public speakers are what most on the Right see the entire democrat party as.
That's the result of well known disinformation tactics by certain media in concert with police forces: wait or provoke a violent outburst in a otherwise peaceful protest, often triggered by carefully planned repetitive police charges, then be ready to film when protesters discharge their frustration against what they have nearby like shops windows and cars, make a enraging video out of it and show only that in prime time to families dining.