With election season just around the corner, the Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday issued a broadside program targeting late-night and daytime programs that air political interviews.
The network said programs such as “The View” and “The Tonight Show” may not be considered “real” news programs and therefore may be forced to divide airtime evenly between opponents.
“The FCC has not been presented with any evidence that interview portions of currently airing late-night or daytime television talk show programs qualify for the bona fide news exemption,” the FCC’s Bureau of Media said Wednesday.
Anna Gomez, the committee’s only Democrat, called the guidance “an escalation of the FCC’s ongoing campaign to censor and control speech.” She appealed to broadcasters not to self-censor for fear of government intimidation.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr previously warned that the agency would not allow late-night hours to become a “narrow partisan circus.” In September, he famously threatened to take action following Jimmy Kimmel’s controversial monologue that led to Disney canceling Kimmel’s show. At the time, Carr also suggested that ABC’s left-wing daytime show “The View” might not be exempt from the FCC’s equal-time rules.
The Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group, found that starting in 2022, 97% of political guests on late-night shows will be left-wing. In the past six months, there have been 35 meetings with Democratic officials, including several Democratic senators and the governor, but zero meetings with Republicans, according to a recent report.
The FCC’s Equal Time Rule is intended to ensure that the public airwaves are free from partisan motivations. Kamala Harris appeared on “SNL” in the final weekend before the 2024 election, prompting NBC to give the Trump campaign equal time to run ads.
However, this rule includes an exception for news interviews. The exception was initially limited to shows such as “Meet the Press” and “Face the Nation,” but a series of commission decisions later extended it to daytime and late-night programming starting with “Donohue” in 1984.
In 2006, the FCC ruled that an interview on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” with then-reelection candidate Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was bona fide news programming and that the NBC affiliate was not obligated to give equal time to his Democratic opponent. The commission ruled that the interview on “The Tonight Show” was “based on the producers’ independent news judgment of the newsworthiness of the participants and was not motivated by any partisan purpose.”
In Wednesday’s guidance, the FCC Media Bureau indicated in a footnote that Leno is no longer the show’s host, suggesting that times have changed.
The station cautioned that there are no blanket exceptions for all late-night and daytime programming and that such decisions are made on a case-by-case basis. The agency also encouraged broadcasters to file formal motions for declaratory rulings if they have any doubts about whether the rule applies.
In response, Gomez said the FCC’s policy has not changed and that both daytime and late-night programs have the right to make news decisions.
“The First Amendment does not give in to government intimidation,” she said.
