Last week comedian Jimmy Kimmel said Jimmy Kimmel Live! and ABC wouldn’t be airing an interview with Texas Democratic Senate hopeful James Talarico on broadcast because they were worried it would anger Trump’s top censorship czar, FCC boss Brendan Carr.
Kimmel and ABC had cause to worry; we’ve outlined in detail how Carr has manufactured several phony investigations — and even begun proceedings to revoke ABC’s local broadcast licenses — for the crimes of journalism and platforming comedians that make fun of the president.
So instead of airing the Talarico interview on ABC broadcast TV over public airwaves, Jimmy Kimmel Live! aired the interview on YouTube, where it currently has over 10 million views.
As it turns out, even doing what Brendan Carr wants — purportedly not using public airwaves to broadcast interviews with politicians Trump is afraid of — upsets Brendan Carr. Carr went on Elon Musk’s right wing propaganda website to call Kimmel’s choice a “hoax,” and ironically complain about “partisan lemmings.”
Carr was apparently triggered by this post by an Austin-based Democratic group, University Democrats:
In response, Carr then went on a very long (and factually incorrect) lecture where he tries to pretend his censorship campaign against ABC is supported by logic, reason, and the law (it’s not):
That screenshot is Carr tweeting:
Ok, fine. I’ll weigh in.
- The Equal Time statute doesn’t apply to GameDay for several reasons.
For one, when it passed the statute, Congress applied it to broadcast tv stations-not cable programs like GameDay. For another, Congress stated that the statute only applies to legally qualified candidates. The Senator is not one.- The Equal Time statute does not prohibit anyone from interviewing anyone on broadcast tv. It is about more speech, not less. Congress wanted to ensure that voters would decide elections, not media gatekeepers picking winners and losers by providing preferential airtime to some candidates and not others.
Indeed, when the statute applies, it simply requires broadcast stations to offer comparable time and placement. And comparable does not necessarily mean an interview by the same person on the same program either.- This ties back to Talarico. He’s just running the same hoax he did a few months ago on Colbert for the purpose of getting clicks and donations-he’s banking on people not understanding the statute or operating as partisan lemmings.
As we’ve noted previously, Carr is claiming to use a dated rule called the “equal opportunity” rule, or “equal time” rule, to claim that ABC’s The View violated the law by airing an interview with Talarico last February, but not airing a counter-interview with a Republican.
But more importantly, The View had struck very clear agreements with the FCC that it has been exempt from this rule since 2002. Carr knows this. But he still falsely claims The View violated the law. Carr’s so desperate to make this whole thing seem like a real violation of the public trust, Carr even worked closely with right wing broadcast affiliates to try and make it look like ABC’s Houston affiliate broke the law (something that will resurface in ABC’s lawsuit against the FCC).
Carr’s post to Elon Musk’s right wing propaganda website is very long, suggesting that Carr put a lot of time and effort into trying to make his censorship campaign against ABC sound cogent. But he continues to cling to this idea that harassing companies specifically when they air politicians Trump doesn’t like somehow serves the public interest. Carr even had his staffers make him a meme!
Again, The View was documentably exempt from the rule Carr is talking about. He just keeps babbling on as if everybody doesn’t know it. And as we’ve noted previously, Carr’s claims that he’s interested in “protecting the public interest” are undermined by the fact he only engages in this kind of harassment when it involves broadcasting people critical of this president.
For example, Carr’s fine with AM radio endlessly airing right wing propaganda, despite it also being under purported (and never enforced) FCC “equal time” provisions.
Most of the people responding to Carr on Elon Musk’s right wing propaganda website (why are people still using Elon Musk’s right wing propaganda website?) weren’t having it:
Given the ham-fisted First Amendment violations Carr is engaged in, he’s going to have a bad time in court. And his overly verbose defense of his historically shitty censorship choices suggests he knows it.