ABC is going to bat for The View.
With the Federal Communications Commission, led by chairman Brendan Carr, targeting the daytime panel show as not being a “bona fide” news program and thus not exempt from FCC rules around equal opportunity, the network is firing back, citing the show’s long history of newsmaking interviews and FCC precedent to make its case in support of the program.
The Disney-owned broadcast network has filed new comments in the matter, telling the FCC that “these Reply Comments arise from an unusual posture.”
“ABC did not come to the Federal Communications Commission asking for anything,” the network continued. “The Commission compelled ABC to file the Petition for Declaratory Ruling at issue here, directing the network to explain why the government should not dictate which political candidates may appear on The View—even though the Commission itself resolved that very question in ABC’s favor more than two decades ago, ruling in 2002 that The View is a bona fide news program not subject to the equal opportunities requirement.”
What followed is a thorough defense of the show, centered on the program’s core free speech rights to determine who to interview and when. And ABC cites the more than 76,000 comments that have been submitted to the FCC since it opened the case, overwhelmingly in support of the show.
“The commenters are right to be concerned,” ABC writes in its filing. “The First Amendment does not permit the government to sit in an editor’s chair. Yet that is the seat the Commission now proposes to take — deciding which broadcast programs qualify as legitimate news and, for those it finds wanting, compelling them to surrender their airtime to guests they never chose to feature.”
ABC, of course, launched an on-air campaign in June encouraging viewers of the show to make their thoughts known to the FCC.
The FCC earlier this year proposed changes to the types of shows that it believes are “bona fide” news programs, specifically calling out daytime and late night talk shows. Bona fide news shows are exempt from FCC equal time rules, but when The View hosted Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico earlier this year, the FCC argued that it ran afoul of the rule, opening an investigation. ABC notes that the rules should, logically, also apply to talk radio.
“What has changed is not the program but the political climate around it,” ABC writes in its filing. “The Commission has trained its attention on daytime and late-night television—programs perceived as unfriendly to the current administration—while leaving untouched the vast landscape of talk radio, where candidates routinely appear without their opponents. A rule pressed against one set of speakers and quietly suspended for another, along lines that track the administration’s political preferences, is not evenhanded regulation. The record here reflects a widespread and well-founded concern that it is not.”
The FCC’s effort already seems to be having a chilling effect: THR reported in March that political bookings have slowed to a trickle ever since the Commission announced its investigation.
In fact the fight over The View is one of two open investigations of ABC at the FCC: The commission demanded that the network file for early renewals of its broadcast licenses, which it did “under protest.” Carr said that the license review is ostensibly about Disney’s DEI practices, though ABC cites First Amendment concerns in its renewal.
In the case of The View, however, Disney also takes time to poke holes in arguments made by outside groups that support the FCC’s changes, with some arguing that the host’s political views, or guests political views, should be a factor, or that only certified “journalists” should be eligible for an exemption.
“A host’s political point of view—even a manifestly partisan one—says nothing about whether programming decisions are driven by newsworthiness rather than an intention to advance or harm a candidacy,” ABC writes. “The Commission has repeatedly granted bona fide news interview exemptions to programs hosted by individuals with openly political views, including elected officials. Talk radio (on both the left and the right) has long operated under the same principle and rightly so. A rule disqualifying programs based on the perceived politics of their hosts is not a neutral regulatory standard. It is viewpoint discrimination.”
“Any rule that compels speech to fit the government’s preferred balance of viewpoints is deeply suspect; the equal opportunities rule cannot survive First Amendment scrutiny without a robust bona fide news exemption,” the filing continues. “The Commission can, and should, recognize as much here.”
Read the full article here
