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Jimmy Kimmel says James Talarico interview won’t air on TV after Trump’s FCC threatened his show (www.rollingstone.com)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/politics@lemmy.world
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The late night host announced that his interview with the Texas Senate candidate will only air on YouTube

Jimmy Kimmel says that his interview with Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico will not air on TV after President Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) threatened Jimmy Kimmel Live!, ABC, their affiliates, and local stations.

During his Wednesday monologue, Kimmel said that while Talarico would stop by the show for an interview on Thursday, viewers at home won’t be able to watch it on broadcast television. Instead, the interview with the Democratic nominee has been relegated to YouTube.

“Tomorrow night, I’ll be interviewing James Talarico — tomorrow night, under unusual circumstances,” Kimmel began. “You know, for a lot of years, for the whole 20-plus years of our show, in fact, I’ve been interviewing Americans who are running for office with no problem at all, just like Letterman did, Leno did, Arsenio, et cetera, et cetera. I’ve interviewed a lot of political candidates from Hillary Clinton to Ted Cruz to Donald Trump himself.”

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[–] 9 points 1 month ago (9 children)

The Equal Time Rule would require Kimmel to offer to air an equal-time interview to Ken Paxton as well as Talarico. Unless Kimmel's program is a bona fide news program, which would be exempt from the rule.

Previous administrations adopted a more broad interpretation of "bona fide news program" that included these late night shows that interview guests. Mainly because this rule and the exception are playing with legal fire regarding the first amendment and core political speech.

The Equal Time Rule applies only to over the air broadcasts. YouTube is unregulated on that point.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    It's ridiculous that they will consider Jimmy Kimmel a news program but then go call Fox News an entertain ment program.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago

    A few points here:

    • Fox News is a cable channel, so it isn't subject to this rule. The rule only applies over the air.
    • Fox News argued in a legal case that one of its talk shows (I think Tucker Carlson) was not news and no one should believe it. I don't think they were talking about their actual news programs on Fox News.
    • The current FCC of this president is arguing that Kimmel is not a news program. Previous FCCs took the opposite view.
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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago

    I don't know if it's the case here, but with Colbert's identical issue (it was even about Talarico, but during the primaries), Colbert not only had offered, but had actually held 2 interviews with Crockett (Talarico's primary opponent).

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    Wait, wtf? I didn’t know it was resurrected as a green slimy zombie. How can the equal time rule apply to comedy but not news? That’s the complete opposite of how it always worked

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