The FCC opened a probe on The View[0] for hosting Talarico. They haven't made a rule change, but they're definitely acting as if the rules already say what they want it to say.
Already in 2026, Colbert has hosted Senator Jon Ossoff and Governor Josh Shapiro who are both up for re-election this year. Why no probe in those cases?
This whole fight is about something called the "bona fides news exception." Basically, in 2006 the FCC ruled that late night interviews were always bona fides news interviews (and therefore not subject to equal time), on January 21st FCC Chairman Brendan Carr wrote a letter suggesting (but not declaring) that the 2006 ruling was incorrect and might be revoked.
Separately, currently elected politicians are pretty much always considered to be bona fides interview subjects, even if they happen to be running for reelection, because e.g. the Governor of Pennsylvania expressing opinions is news.
If CBS lawyers wanted to fight and bring Talarico on, they would probably win- the letter is not actually changing the rule, and the FCC would have to defend the rule change in court and would probably lose. But the point is that CBS has determined to be working towards the Fuehrer, and wants to do so, and so they are doing what they are doing.
Cynicism warning, but my honest guess is they see that the Colbert problem will be solved in June and so don't feel the need to spend any effort on him.
Correct. CBS is now owned by Larry Ellison's son. They are big supporters of the current administration. This act, among others, shows that they are willing to silence dissenting voices on media properties they own.
This is exactly how effective censorship works. For example, what most people don't understand about Chinese censorship is that the foundation of their system is that everything is attributable to someone eventually. So they start by targeting anonymity. Then when something they don't like is published and gains traction, the originating party and the major distributors are punished -- sometimes very publicly. The chilling effect is that people will learn to self censor. Oh and they keep the rules really vague so you always err on the side of caution.
CBS self censoring is basically the same thing.
The Chinese government can then say "What censorship?" or "It's rare" and now the FCC can do the same.
Playing whack-a-mole is not a good strategy for censorship. The chilling effect of self censorship is the winning strategy.
The chilling effect is the entire point. An FCC source literally told CNN, "the threat is the point." CBS isn't being randomly skittish. Paramount needs regulatory approval for its WBD acquisition, paid $16 million to settle a Trump lawsuit right before needing FCC approval for the Skydance merger, and canceled Colbert days after he criticized that deal. ABC suspended Kimmel after FCC threats. The FCC opened an investigation into The View just for having Talarico on.
And yes, Larry Ellison is a hardcore Trump supporter, but even if he weren't, this is how every network is behaving. Disney's Bob Iger is a Democrat and ABC still paid Trump and suspended Kimmel. When the government holds regulatory leverage over your business, "obeying in advance" isn't cowardice you can blame on the network, it's the intended mechanism of state pressure.
> "obeying in advance" isn't cowardice you can blame on the network, it's the intended mechanism of state pressure.
No, there is no reason to absolve the agency of anybody with power (eg money and platform). The ownership class is kowtowing to Trump because they think regardless of whatever happens, they personally will be relatively fine as long as they go along. And they are probably right, even as Trump leads our country off a cliff. But that doesn't mean they get to escape judgement for being cowards.
That's not what I said. I said it isn't cowardice you can blame on the network instead of the FCC, which is what the parent comment did by saying the fault lies "more with CBS." CBS deserves blame. The administration wielding the threat deserves more.
Resistance requires an active, costly choice. The entire structure of public companies, fiduciary duty, short-term shareholder pressure, regulatory dependency, incentivizes compliance. That's not an excuse, it's the point. The system is designed so that capitulation is the path of least resistance, which is exactly why the blame has to center on whoever is exploiting that structure rather than on each individual institution for failing to be heroic. The firms and universities that did fight back (Perkins Coie, Harvard, Jenner & Block) won in court every time, while the ones that cut deals (Columbia, Paul Weiss, Brown) gave up money and autonomy for nothing the fighters didn't get for free. But fighting required leaders willing to accept real personal and institutional risk. Expecting that as the default rather than addressing the coercion creating the dilemma is how you end up with a system where everyone folds and nobody's responsible except the victims.
Of course, increasing the cost of capitulation is one place where consumers actually have power. Disney suffered 1.7 million streaming cancellations after suspending Kimmel, and Kimmel was back on the air within five days. That works. But notice what it required: massive organized public pressure aimed at the company and political pressure aimed at the FCC. Not just finger-wagging for being cowards.
> That's not what I said. I said it isn't cowardice you can blame on the network instead of the FCC, which is what the parent comment did by saying the fault lies "more with CBS." CBS deserves blame. The administration wielding the threat deserves more.
That's fair, this lines up with where I am mostly coming from - we shouldn't absolve blame from one group by focusing it on another.
But your second paragraph then goes on to do that? We're dealing with a societal attack where the fascists are trying to topple all of our societal institutions into a self-perpetuating low-trust low-authority state. If they achieve in doing that, then the Schelling point becomes to not resist as it will be costly and ineffective. But the point we're at now, we should all be pushing to resist the fascists to prevent them flipping the dynamic.
Practically, you're overstating what fiduciary duty to shareholders requires. I'd also say you're also overstating the regulatory threat, as you went on to point out how the organizations who have resisted the fascists haven't really lost out by doing so. You can also apply this argument to politicians like Congress, judges, etc who don't want to rock the boat. But surely it's not sensible to absolve them!
It's not just a matter of "finger-wagging", rather it's pointing out that if the people with outsized power just go along rather than standing up to this, then they're in the same exact camp as the hardcore openly-Trump fascists. Maybe that camp will be lucrative if the fascists do succeed at conquering our society, or maybe they can be stripped of their stature and power when they fail. A lifetime ban on being a corporate officer or board member for abusing that position to try to overthrow the United States wouldn't be out of line.
I was thinking about this a bit in the context of that "March for Billionaires". Why did that seem preposterous? Because billionaires don't deserve a gold star simply for being billionaires! Rather they get credit for what they do with that wealth to help our society. And no, the value they created by growing a business doesn't count - rather when you get that level of wealth, you can use it to move back up the gradient of market optimization, and fix the problems we have that come from being stuck in local minima. If they want recognition and goodwill, this is the work they have to do. And if the poor billionaires really can't think of anything useful to do with that wealth, there is some really low hanging fruit like ending food poverty in the US.
We mostly agree. I'm really just making the point that focusing blame on the capitulators lets the people wielding state power off the hook. I suppose you could take the position that the industrialists who capitulated to the Nazis (I mean, those who didn't actively support them to begin with) were more at fault than the Nazis. Personally, I don't believe that.
And to be clear, I'm not saying fiduciary duty requires capitulation. CEOs can absolutely make the case that resistance serves long-term shareholder interests, and the evidence backs them up. Costco is thriving after, and arguably because, they held firm on DEI. Target capitulated and lost $12.5 billion in market value and its CEO resigned. I started shopping at Costco for this reason and haven't been in a Target since Trump took office, after shopping their regularly. What I am saying is that the short-term incentive structure of public companies makes capitulation easier, which is exactly why the coercion works so well and why it's the bigger problem. The system erects hurdles to doing what's right, and often what's even in a company's own long-term interest.
And this is a good thing, if you think that the billionaires running large businesses like CNN will generally act in their own selfish self-interest and that they need the government to hold regulatory leverage over their businesses in order to make them act in a socially-beneficial way.
But then you have to trust the government that manages the regulatory agency to act in a socially-beneficial; and only at most half the US population does at any given time.
This is arguably worse, isn't it? The administration gets to say that it was the network's own decision and that they had no role in it. Taking over news and public media with the help of oligarch buddies is much more effect than a public spat with them.
Nah the fault lies with the American public for talking the freedom/exceptionalism talk, social projection of grit and ruggedness while the reality is learned helplessness and codependency
democracies past, present, and future inevitably crumble as the need to cater to the demos grows greater and greater with every generation of voters.
i know this is a contrivance but nevertheless: we don't consult the entire hospital how to treat my heart condition yet we accept on face value that obeying the vagaries of the hoi polloi is the best way to decide who controls the levers of power in civil society.
duh. why is this always phrased as if the populace is unaccountable for the very existence of these elites? why is it always assumed that these unaccountable elites are better held in check by the farce of democracy than a proud genuine elite in place of the ignoble “””elite”””?
the people get what they deserve. if democracy was a functional system of government then by its own underlying assumptions the citizenry right now would be shooting, bombing, & stabbing these so-called elites. But we are held in subjugation as a result of our own fealty. It is a choice.
Having grown up rural, fixing farm equipment, rebuilding cars, which propelled me towards a degree in electrical engineering (and after that an MSc in math), my colleagues the last 20 years have watched a lot of TV and played all the video games but can barely bake a potato.
"Unaccountable elites" are enabled by know-nothings in corporate management, software engineering teams, accounting, HR "just following orders".
The lack of muscle memory to be self sufficient keeps people in their lane and unable to look away, fix their own stuff, make their own stuff.
When labor knows nothing but just following orders leadership is empowered to build and fill gulags; what are the people going to do? Resist en masse? Not when they are addicted to GrubHub delivery of Subway.
And the most surprising thing about this particular story to me is that a lot of people (here in the comments) seem surprised about it.
I don't mean to normalize this, because it isn't normal, but anyone surprised by this hasn't been paying attention over the past year+, this didn't arrive out of the blue.
My understanding (please correct me if it's incorrect) is that the "worst-case" scenario for a broadcaster is that they may have to upload a record of political air time to a public file.
If an opposing candidate sees this, they can then request equal air time from that broadcaster.
The rule is in place so that one party or viewpoint can't dominate broadcast media. That's a good thing right?
The rule change here is that traditionally "bona fide" news programs have been, by default, issued an exception to the rule. That has spawned a bunch of "pseudo-news" shows that have also been claiming this exception. Here, the FCC is now saying "hey, you don't just automatically get granted an exception to the rule and get to call yourself a bona fide news program if you're not actually one"". That seems completely reasonable to me.
Broadcast media is held to this FCC standard because they are granted a monopoly for a broadcast spectrum, and it isn't physically possible for a competitor to broadcast on the same spectrum. Streaming etc... doesn't need to follow these rules.
I do think it's wrong that talk radio doesn't seem to be held to the same standard, though.
The worst case scenario now is not limited by process and law. Compliance with politics is taken into consideration for all government business. For examples, see the executive orders blacklisting specific law firms, the withholding of funds to states or areas that vote Democratic, and the threat of investigation into a network after a host said something the President didn't like.
The worst case scenario for a broadcaster is that the FCC commissioner will fabricate an excuse to illegally yank their license, which both he and his boss have explicitly threatened to do to any broadcaster which won't agree to stop criticizing Donald Trump. I agree that one could imagine a reasonable system of broadcast regulation where opinionated talk shows don't host political candidates, but that's not what's going on here.
Everything I've seen is that is specifically what's going on, do you have different information?
The only threat to pulling a license would be if they didn't comply with the FCC rule change, that we've both agreed is reasonable, correct?
Do you have specific examples of the administration threatening to pull a license due to criticism? If that's the case, I'd certainly be vehemently against such action, just as I was when the government illegally acted to suppress and censor alternate viewpoints during covid.
When the FCC chair originally announced he was pursuing this (https://time.com/7318743/abc-kimmel-the-view-brendan-carr-fc...), he was pretty clear that he was doing so in pursuit of the President's directive to punish broadcast channels that say things he doesn't like. Trump himself was pretty explicit that the ultimate goal is pulling their broadcast licenses and his subordinates should fabricate an excuse.
As you say, the FCC has declined to pursue talk radio programs over this issue, even though they're clearly subject to the rule in principle. That's not a mistake, it's because those programs push viewpoints the President favors so he doesn't want to punish them.
Thank you for the link and the concrete reference, I hadn't seen that before.
I think the article and the video summaries I've seen of that interview are a little deceptively edited, but the idea appears to be the same.
Apparently, it's illegal to knowingly broadcast false information [1] within certain guidelines, and that can indeed cause a license revocation:
"The FCC prohibits broadcasting false information about a crime or a catastrophe if the broadcaster knows the information is false and will cause substantial “public harm” if aired. FCC rules specifically say that the “public harm must begin immediately, and cause direct and actual damage to property or to the health or safety of the general public, or diversion of law enforcement or other public health and safety authorities from their duties.”
The FCC chair referenced this law in response to Jimmy Kimmel claiming that the Charlie Kirk shooter was "maga":
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,”
While this was demonstrably untrue, and it was widely known to be untrue at the time, I agree that it doesn't appear to meet the FCC standard I quoted above.
I actually find the FCC rule itself a bit disturbing, as it seems to position the government as an arbiter of truth.
It isn't a new problem, Jefferson struggled with how to deal with it too [2]
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle"
What do you suggest as a solution? Should false information be ok to broadcast with a FCC license? Who gets to determine whether it's false?
> What do you suggest as a solution? Should false information be ok to broadcast with a ... license?
This seems like begging the question. The issue here obviously isn't truth vs untruth, it is fealty to the regime vs opposition to the regime. All the evidence points in this direction, and there isn't a better case yet made in the opposite.
Witness the example cited above: right-wing talk radio, famous for spreading untruthful info and agreeing with the regime, is let off scot-free. Or how the regime itself spread untruths about Alex Pretti after they killed him. That categorically debunks any purported "truth vs untruth" decision criteria and seems to confirm the fealty vs opposition decision criteria.
Fun thought experiment: re-read this situation, but imagine it took place in russia, by putin's hand. Like seriously, what oppressive regime in modern history HASN'T had some variation of silencing the opposition "for broadcasting 'false information'"?:
> On the morning of March 4, the last remaining independent news outlet in Russia — the award-winning Novaya Gazeta — announced the end of its reporting on the war in Ukraine in response to Russian government demands.
> A new law that bans the “dissemination of knowingly false information” about the Russian armed forces — and carries up to a 15-year penalty — was the final blow. [0]
This is a terrifying level of chilling effects. What are we to consider about our nation at this point? "Free speech" has long been a term with contested definitions, but this certainly sounds like its death in every sense.
The shift from democracy to dictatorship isn't a cliff that a lot of people imagine it to be. It's a gradual slide with no abrupt changes in between. If you're waiting for a signal, you'll get it at the bottom of the ramp.
Seriously this is why people use to take every government transgression and overreach so seriously. Now multiple times a day it's something that would have been a straight SCANDAL in the past.
It's happening right now y'all because it was always happening and will always happen without constant push back.
Right now they're 'flooding the zone' - a Steve Bannon slang for confusing and causing fatigue among people with far too many scandals far too often. I hope history will will remember him and his ilk with the reputation they deserve.
If CBS were headed by someone with gumption and less willingness to kowtow to the government, they could resist this pressure and still be fine. Worst case scenario, a merger would get rejected and they would be targeted by some spurious lawsuits. Going out of business is not a realistic risk.
What is a risk, however, is non-optimal shareholder value. We live in a world where the stock price is more important than anything else, including doing the right thing.
For CVS the stock price isn't the driver. It's owned to 77% by the Ellison family, who certainly want to make a buck, but also want political influence and control.
How is CBS a victim here? They have shown by their actions (Bari Weiss, the 60 Minutes neutering, etc) they are fully backing what Larry Ellison and Sons want them to pump out. This isn't victim blaming, it's pointing out a complicit conspirator.
If you give in and comply without a fight, are you actually a victim or are you actually a collaborator? CBS is controlled by Ellison, which makes this look a lot like collaboration.