M.D. Kittle writes for the Federalist about an interesting promise from the head of the Federal Communications Commission.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has a message for the biased corporate broadcast media: Their “free monopoly” without responsibility ride is over.
As The FCC investigates Disney-owned ABC on alleged discriminatory practices and The View’s absurd claims that it’s a “bona fide news program,” the old, corrupt guard of broadcast media are being forced to come to terms with Equal Time. And it’s driving them insane.
“The American people went through hoax after hoax after hoax, whether is was the Hunter Biden laptop, or ‘mostly peaceful’ protests, the list goes on and on,” Carr said this week on The Federalist Radio Hour podcast. “The legacy media has really done this to itself.”
“I think it’s good for them to want to correct course and earn a little trust back,” Carr said of the FCC’s renewed focus on the “statutory equal opportunities requirement” in the Communications Act of 1934. Equal Time, as the act’s Section 315 is commonly known, stipulates that a broadcast program that hosts a political candidate also must provide equal access to the office seeker’s opponent to appear on the show or in another commensurate capacity.
The section was amended in 1959 when Congress passed limited exemptions to the equal time requirement for content deemed “bona fide” news — interviews, newscasts, and documentaries. The idea was to spur news coverage of political campaign activity in the early days of broadcast television.
Congress gave the FCC discretion to determine the scope of each exemption, according to the agency’s guidance issued in January, putting broadcast stations on notice and sending shockwaves through the industry.
As the guidance states, Congress’ inclusion of “bona fide” in the exemption categories reflects congressional concern that “broadcast stations would apply the exemptions too broadly in service of a political agenda and thereby frustrate the original purpose of the equal opportunities requirement to maximize broadcast coverage of political events.”
