Talkshow host Stephen Colbert has accused Donald Trump’s administration of censoring its critics after CBS pulled his interview with Texas Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico on Monday.
“That’s Texas state representative James Talarico,” Colbert told his audience. “He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast.
“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. And because my network clearly does not want us to talk about this…Let’s talk about this.”
Colbert claimed that CBS pre-emptively bowed to “guidance” from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, Brendan Carr, to enforce equal air time on a talkshow for all candidates in any political race.
“Let’s just call this what it is. Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV, because all Trump does is watch TV.”
James Talarico talks to Stephen Colbert on ‘The Late Show’. Image: YouTube
Stephen Colbert defies CBS with YouTube post
The FCC has traditionally acknowledged a bona fide exemption for news interviews, but Carr decreed in January that the commission would no longer do so for talkshows: “Broadcast television stations have an obligation to operate in the public interest – not in any narrow partisan, political interest.”
New FCC guidance, though, indicates to those talk shows that they no longer should believe that they would fall under the so-called “bonafide news” exemption. Carr said that a determination on whether a show is exempt would come down to a number of factors, including whether there was a “partisan motivation” in having a political candidate as a guest.
“If you’re fake news, you’re not going to qualify for the bona fide news exemption,” said Carr.
Colbert said on his show: “It’s no surprise that two of the people most affected by this threat are me and my friend Jimmy Kimmel.”
Carr later responded, “If Kimmel or Colbert want to continue to do their programming and 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 then said he was following Carr’s advice and posting his Talarico interview in full on YouTube.
Talarico’s take on Trump’s ‘censorship’
Talarico suggests in the clip that the reported intervention by the FCC was prompted by Trump’s declining popularity.
“I think that Donald Trump is worried that we’re about to flip Texas,” he said. “This is the party that ran against cancel culture, and now they’re trying to control what we watch, what we say, what we read.
“Corporate media executives are selling out the first amendment to curry favor with corrupt politicians.”