The FCC Is Using ‘Equal Time’ to Silence Late Night

The First Amendment looms behind the dispute between Stephen Colbert and CBS about the network’s decision to not air the host’s interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico. The network says the impetus for its decision was guidance issued by Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission in January. The guidance, which was clearly politically motivated, says late-night shows now must give equal time to candidates for office. If they provide on-screen broadcast time to one candidate, they must provide time to their opponents.

The result is wrong in all kinds of ways. It chills free speech, including the airing of Colbert’s interview. It reflects the Trump administration’s weaponization of the FCC to target the speech of talk show hosts who threaten Trump — something we already saw when FCC Chairman Brendan Carr succeeded in having Jimmy Kimmel temporarily taken off the air by threatening the affiliates that carry his show. There was no good reason for the FCC to reverse guidance going back to 2006, which said late-night shows were exempt from the equal time rule, like all other bona fide news programs. What’s more, the whole episode shows why the equal time rule belongs in the dustbin of history — it is ill-suited to an era when most people get their television through cable or the internet, not over the airwaves.