Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, says he’s not trying to censor anyone and certainly didn’t order CBS not to air an interview with Democrat James Talarico.
“Someone was falsely claiming they were censored by the Trump administration because they knew the legacy media would eat it up,” Mr. Carr said at an event hosted by Breitbart News. “It was all just a ploy to get clicks to get donations.”
Late-night comic Stephen Colbert taped the interview last month with Mr. Talarico, a state representative in Texas, and posted it on YouTube after saying CBS barred it from airing.
CBS said it didn’t actually block the broadcast but warned Mr. Colbert of the potential for running afoul of the FCC and its new interpretation of rules requiring equal time for opposing political candidates on non-news programs. In this case, that would have meant time for U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who was Mr. Talarico’s opponent in the primary for the Senate seat in Texas.
Mr. Colbert cast blame far and wide, chiding CBS for the legal warning about the equal time rule, complaining that CBS’s parent company, Paramount, caved to pressure and calling the FCC “bullies.”
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Mr. Carr called the incident a “censorship hoax.”
He said the interview could have aired as long as CBS gave Ms. Crockett airtime, too.
Mr. Carr said the censorship claims made it seem “as if we had some sort of dump button somewhere at the FCC to prevent you from running some sort of ads.”
For decades, the equal time rule was deemed not to apply to talk shows, which were grouped with news programs as exempt. Under Mr. Carr, the FCC has reversed that decision.
Weeks ahead of the Colbert hubbub, the FCC said it would probe ABC’s “The View” program after it hosted Mr. Talarico.
The Colbert interview turned Mr. Talarico into a liberal martyr and appears to have been decisive in the Texas primary, erasing Ms. Crockett’s lead in the polls. Mr. Talarico ended up winning the Democrats’ nomination last week by more than 6 percentage points.
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