FCC Democrat insists the rules remain unchanged
The equal-time requirement, officially called the Equal Opportunities Rule, applies to radio and television stations holding FCC licenses to use the public airwaves. When a station allocates time to one political candidate, it must make comparable time and placement available to an opposing candidate if that opponent requests it.
The rule exempts candidate appearances on bona fide news programs. As the FCC noted in 2022, candidate appearances on bona fide newscasts, interview programs, certain types of news documentaries, and during on-the-spot coverage of bona fide news events are excluded from the Equal Opportunities requirement.
Entertainment talk shows have typically been considered bona fide news programs for this purpose. But Carr said in September that he’s uncertain whether programs like The View qualify for that exemption, and today’s public notice indicates the FCC might no longer treat such programs as exempt.
Commissioner Anna Gomez, the commission’s sole Democrat, issued a press release faulting the FCC for what she called “a misleading announcement suggesting that certain late-night and daytime programs may no longer qualify for the long-standing ‘bona fide news interview’ exemption under the commission’s political broadcasting rules.”
“Nothing has fundamentally changed with respect to our political broadcasting rules,” Gomez said. “The FCC has not adopted any new regulation, interpretation, or commission-level policy altering the long-standing news exemption or equal time framework. For decades, the commission has recognized that bona fide news interviews, late-night programs, and daytime news shows deserve editorial discretion based on newsworthiness rather than political favoritism. That principle has not been repealed, revised, or voted on by the commission. This announcement therefore does not change the law, but it does represent an escalation in this FCC’s ongoing campaign to censor and control speech.”
