FCC chair calls Colbert ‘censorship’ controversy a ‘hoax’ orchestrated for clicks and donations
Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, says he’s not trying to censor anyone and certainly didn’t order CBS not to air an interview with Democrat James Talarico.
“Someone was falsely claiming that it was censored by the Trump administration because they knew the mainstream media was going to eat it up,” Mr. Carr said at a Breitbart News event. “It was just a ploy to get clicks and get donations.”
Late-night comedian Stephen Colbert recorded the interview last month with Mr. Talarico, a Texas state representative, and posted it on YouTube after he said CBS had banned its broadcast.
CBS said it had not actually blocked the broadcast, but warned Mr. Colbert of the risk of running afoul of the FCC and its new interpretation of rules requiring equal time for opposing political candidates on non-news programs. In this case, it would have meant time for U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who was Mr. Talarico’s opponent in the primary for the Texas Senate seat.
Mr. Colbert largely blamed CBS for the legal warning about the equal time rule, complaining that CBS’s parent company, Paramount, gave in to pressure and calling the FCC “bullies.”
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Mr Carr called the incident a “censorship hoax”.
He said the interview could have been broadcast provided that CBS also gave Ms. Crockett airtime.
Mr. Carr said the censorship allegations made it seem “like we have some kind of dump button somewhere at the FCC to stop you from running some kind of ad.”
For decades, the equal time rule was considered not to apply to talk shows, which were grouped with news programs as exempt. Under Mr. Carr, the FCC reversed that decision.
A few weeks before the Colbert brouhaha, the FCC announced that it would investigate ABC’s “The View” after it hosted Mr. Talarico.
The Colbert interview made Mr. Talarico a liberal martyr and appears to have been decisive in the Texas primary, erasing Ms. Crockett’s lead in the polls. Mr. Talarico ended up winning the Democratic nomination last week by more than 6 percentage points.
