FCC Chair Pushes Back On Allegations Of Censorship Over Stephen Colbert Interview

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Wednesday pushed back against allegations of censorship from CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert and a Democratic Texas Senate candidate.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Colbert could have aired his interview with Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate, if the late-night TV show he hosts complied with federal equal time rules by airing interviews with other Democrats vying for the seat.

“There was no censorship here at all,” Carr told reporters.

“Every single broadcaster in this country has an obligation to be responsible for the programming that they choose to air, and they’re responsible whether it complies with FCC rules or not, and it doesn’t, and those individual broadcasters are also going to have a potential liability.”

Talarico has alleged in posts on his X account that the FCC and the Trump administration had tried to censor the interview and barred him from appearing on Colbert’s program, although the interview was published online.

“The reason the Trump administration and their billionaire friends are trying to silence me and this movement is because they’re worried that we are going to flip Texas in November,” he said in a video, which was posted on X.

Aside from Talarico’s allegations of censorship, Colbert, who is set to leave “The Late Show” in May, also criticized CBS and the Trump administration during his program.

“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,” the “The Late Show” host said on Tuesday, adding that “because my network clearly doesn’t want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this.”

The interview with Talarico was uploaded to Colbert’s YouTube channel on Tuesday evening.

In statements to media outlets in response to Colbert’s claims, CBS denied that “The Late Show” was barred by the network from airing the Talarico interview and instead said that its lawyers advised the company that the broadcast could trigger the equal time rule.

“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,” CBS said in the statement.

It noted that the interview was published on the show’s YouTube channel instead.

The issue came just hours before early voting opened Tuesday in Texas’s primary elections, which feature hotly contested Senate nomination races in both parties.

Talarico’s main opponent in the primary is Crockett (D-Texas) and both have built national profiles through viral social media clips.

On the Republican side, four-term incumbent Sen. John Cornyn is facing the political fight of his career against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas).

In a notice last month, the FCC said that it is changing the rules exempting certain late-night and daytime talk shows from being mandated to provide equal airtime to opposing candidates.

“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 said on Jan. 21.

“Moreover, a program that is motivated by partisan purposes, for example, would not be entitled to an exemption under longstanding FCC precedent.”

The Epoch Times contacted the FCC for comment Wednesday.