Stephen Colbert says CBS forbid interview of Democrat because of FCC threat
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
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.
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.
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)
- In the 1980s The RNC created the Ballot Security Task Force [1], which was a scheme to strike people off the voter rolls by sending them a mailer if they didn't respond. This led to a consent decree requiring "preclearance" for any voter roll enforcement that lasted 25+ years [2];
- Republicans lead the charge in restricting access to mail-in voting because it's used more by Democratic Party voters [3] despite there being no evidence of fraud;
- In response to Arizona turning blue in 2020, Republicans went on a massive voter suppression spree [4], which disproportionately impacts Native Americans [5];
- Nationally, the push to have a street address unfairly impacts Native Americans who often don't have an official sstreet address if they live on a reservation. That's not an accident. It's the point;
- Even the push to force people to have birth certificates is aimed at Native Americans and poor people. There are quite literally millions of Americans who don't have them [6];
- Even if you have the necessary documentation to get an ID, you may have problems getting access. Again, this is by design. For example, Louisiana closed a bunch of DMV offices in minority areas such that the only DMV in certain black-majority areas was only open one day a month [7];
- The so-called SAVE Act recently passed by the house required your birth certificate to match your ID. Well, that's a problem for married women [8].
- States such as Florida have used private firms to strike people off the voter rolls if their name sounds like a convicted felon anywhere else in the country [9].
And why are we doing all this? There is zero evidence of voter fraud on a large scale [10]. And those convicted of voter fraud are most commonly Republican anyway [11].
But let's just say that we want an ID to vote. Why don't we fund the Federal government to issue it and make sure it is readily available and cheap or free? No, we can't have that because it's never been the point.
At some point you have to realize that they don't care about "integrity". Voter suppression is the point because it's the only way they can win elections.
Lastly, I feel compelled to remind people of Lee Atwater's famous 1981 remarks [12]. Republicans went from overt racism to being ever more abstract but the goals remained the same: to disproportionately impact black and brown people.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force
[2]: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/09/rnc-ballot-securit...
[3]: https://elections-blog.mit.edu/articles/how-policy-influence...
[4]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/ariz...
[5]: https://azmirror.com/2024/06/06/100-years-after-citizenship-...
[6]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/mill...
[7]: https://www.naacpldf.org/press-release/one-day-a-month-is-no...
[8]: https://www.npr.org/2025/04/13/g-s1-59684/save-act-married-w...
[9]: https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2000/06/23/hundreds-of-vote...
[10]: https://www.hoover.org/research/no-evidence-voter-fraud-guid...
[11]: https://archive.amarkfoundation.org/the2020election/voter-fr...
[12]: https://www.bunkhistory.org/resources/lee-atwaters-infamous-...
What if I am not home? I go to a website a month before the vote, they send me a letter and I vote whenever I like before my election.
Everybody has such an ID card since that card is what you would also show to proove your identity elsewhere. And since we have working social welfare every slice of the citizen population can also afford it.
If you want to solve that problem, it is possible. If you want to solve it, that is. Right wing parties will always use non-citizens as scapegoats that are at the same time draining the welfare state and stealing your jobs. Oh, and you votes. Believing them without citation is the problem here.
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
In what world is that fair or remotely democratic?
And don't get me started on freezing the rep count to 435. I certainly don't feel represented by my congresscritter.
I didn't ask why it is the way that it is or if it is operating to the plan presented by the Founding Fathers.
I asked in what universe is it remotely fair or democratic. Care to try and come up with an answer to that question?
Senators were originally appointed by state governments to prevent the federal government from slowly weakening the states ( https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S1-2-3/A... “To further allay Anti-Federalist concerns regarding concentrated federal power in Congress, the Federalists emphasized that bicameralism, which lodged legislative power directly in the state governments through equal representation in the Senate, would serve to restrain, separate, and check federal power”). That’s not really “democratic.”
In grade school, we focused on the fact that states with small populations weren’t enthusiastic about letting larger states set national policy. Sure, New York would have been happy to have more influence in both the House and the Senate than any other state, but Rhode Island, Delaware, and Connecticut weren’t going to sign under those terms. Horse trading to get them to join wasn’t “democratic” either, but they wouldn’t have joined any other way.
I am well versed in why the Senate is structured the way that it is. That is beside the point. The simple fact is we have a legislative structure that does not properly give voice to voters in larger states while over-representing people who choose to live in small states. It is patently unfair and should be fixed.
There is no universe in which the vast swaths of unpopulated land in Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, or the Dakotas deserve the same amount of legislative power as the densely populated states of California, New York, Texas, and Florida.
But here we are, and this country has borne the painful lessons of a Constitution that over-represents residents of these lightly populated states through the tyranny of minority rule.
"Yes, but it only has two senators. The 39.5 million people in California have the same Senatorial representation as the less than 600 thousand people in Wyoming.
"In what world is that fair or remotely democratic?"
I answered "Not everything in the constitution is meant to be democratic."
I'm sorry if you are not capable of understanding how that answers your question.
Even if you just count the House of Representatives, smaller states have a per capita advantage.
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.
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.
"Very liberal/liberal" has increased though (at the expense of moderates).
After all the polarism in "reality show politics", my diehard liberal friends seem less liberal to me, but they'll state which team they're on more fervently than ever.
Then he lied about it and the network corrected him.
But okay, yeah they pushed the boundaries and all that bullshit.
How did Colbert lie? And do you have a source for the supposed lie? The equal-time rule does not obligate proactive actions from the broadcaster such as invitations or "extend[ing]" an offer. The equal-time rule requires an equal opportunity for political opponents to use a broadcast station, and it is up to each political opponent to reach out and assert their intent to use the equal-time rule. Jasmine Crockett did not request to be on Stephen Colbert's show, much less was denied such a request.
> Then he lied about it and the network corrected him.
No, CBS lied about what the equal-time rule requires.
> He didn't want to abide by the 95-year-old law about equal time
Don't pretend that the "law about equal time" is the same in 2026 as it was in the 95 previous years [1]:
> Late-night and daytime talk show interviews were long considered to be bona fide news segments until FCC chair Brendan Carr issued new guidance in 2026 signaling that these types of shows would no longer be automatically granted the bona fide news exemption.
[break to avoid mixing quotes from different parties]
> He didn't want to abide by the 95-year-old law about equal time
Could you explain how you reached the number 95? I don't get 95+-1 from 2026-1927 or 2026-1934 [1].
> and didn't extend an offer to Jasmine Crockett.
CBS didn't want to air the Talarico interview because CBS didn't want to be forced to provide equal time in case Jasmine Crockett would have used the equal-time rule to get her own interview. Colbert did not oppose and has not opposed having Crockett on in relation to the equal-time rule.
I get the feeling that you're pretending to be angry on Jasmine Crockett's behalf. What's more, it seems like you want to be angry at Colbert and are projecting your feelings onto Jasmine Crockett. But why does Jasmine Crockett seem to have no issue with Colbert's actions [2]?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule#Details
[2] https://www.thewrap.com/media-platforms/politics/jasmine-cro...
> Jasmine Crockett did not request to be on Stephen Colbert's show, much less was denied such a request.
I should have written: Jasmine Crockett did not request to be on Stephen Colbert's show, so her non-existent request couldn't have been denied by CBS or Colbert. CBS does not violate the equal-time rule until CBS were to deny an interview request that relies on the equal-time rule.
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.
My general understanding is that Republican politicians are more often refused speaking slots on non-Right media, whereas Democratic politicians don't want to go on Right media.
Do you disagree with that general statement?
The equal time requirement wouldn’t prevent Colbert from interviewing a political candidate. And it wouldn’t require Colbert to send invitations to anybody. It would require Colbert to allow a competing political candidate to appear if the candidate demanded it.
CBS could decide they don’t want that hassle. Colbert could decide he doesn’t want that hassle. But the law as it stands doesn’t prevent the interview.
I actually remember when Reagan’s FCC decided to stop enforcing equal time. Plenty of people complained about how the change would ruin America. Now they seem to believe Reagan was right after all.
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.
Why assume the rule would be applied fairly? Carr said they would not enforce it against right wing radio.
However, all those conservative billionaires will still own their media companies. Expanding the coverage of the equal time rule would hand the next Democratic administration a big club to swing at them.
Hey maybe for his next act, Carr will revive the Fairness Doctrine that was repealed under Reagan.
You think it’s going to be enforced against their side ?
Read the room
My favorite dictator quote:
> To my friends everything, to my enemies the law
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.
Legitimate or not, the policy is what's there now, until challenged. You agree with that:
> might attempt to enforce it and courts might uphold that enforcement
And, clearly, so do their lawyers.
Don’t act like this FCC’s actions should be taken in good faith.
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.
This seems very dubious given the recent ownership change of CBS and the lack of reason behind the decision. The point the parent comment brings up is that "equal airtime" requires that someone actually request to go on the show and be refused. There is no legitimate cover for CBS' decision as this did not occur. It seems incredibly likely to be one made in fear of political liability rather than legal.
Their lawyers recommendation, and Colbert's response and behavior, aligns with the case if they did refuse guests.
Is there some reference you're going off of related to this, that makes it clear they didn't? Or does Carr possibly have knowledge that they did, as part of the (as the article points out) ongoing investigation, resulting in their lawyers making the recommendation?
Call me a crazy conspiracy theorist but, a strongly left leaning show, with a strong left leaning audience, whose whole routine is making fun of republicans, refusing republican guests does NOT seem all that crazy. I would personally expect it, just to prevent their staff from the usual Twitter mob death threats for "platforming nazis"! I also think this whole thing is unreasonable, but I also think it's unreasonable to have 6 companies control 90% of the media, giving them the domination where their guests choices can even be considered a problem.
Colbert's response and behavior also happen to align with his desire to remain contracted with CBS; the lawyers' recommendation aligns with CBS's desire to cater to the whims of the current US administration.
> Is there some reference you're going off of related to this, that makes it clear they didn't [refuse any guests]?
Colbert would say yes without hesitation. He has no reason to refuse the guest because he would take the opportunity to skewer them. I daresay he would revel in it. This equal airtime requirement does not also require equal consideration of opinion. It seems more prudent to look for evidence that this actually occurred; for example, has anybody come forward to complain about being refused as a guest on Colbert's show? One would think someone concerned about publicity would be very interested to do exactly that (unless it would be defamatory, of course).
> Call me a crazy conspiracy theorist but, a strongly left leaning show, with a strong left leaning audience, whose whole routine is making fun of republicans, refusing republican guests does NOT seem all that crazy.
For the reasons I describe in the previous paragraph, that would be illogical for him to refuse, additionally for the reasons as noted in this case: it could be considered illegal to do so. On this topic of conspiracy theories, it appears a more likely one is that this current US administration, known for its bullshit, is just offering more bullshit.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Again, not saying that's the case, I'm not from the US so I don't much care, but it's funny to me that both side accuse each other of the same strategy.