The Dictatorship
What to know about the ‘equal time’ rule and Colbert’s Talarico interview
Stephen Colbert’s comments that network executives pulled his interview with Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico over fears it would violate regulatory guidance from the Trump administration has prompted a conversation about the rules governing how media outlets treat political coverage.
The concern about the interviewwhich the late-night host referenced in his Monday night show and later posted in full online, stems from a requirement that broadcast stations give equal time to political candidates when they appear on-air.
Although there are multiple exemptions to the provision, the Trump administration through the Federal Communications Commission — which regulates the nation’s airwaves — has been moving to clamp down specifically on programs like Colbert’s, which the agency has suggested may be “motivated by partisan purposes.”
“He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast,” Colbert said on his program, ”The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
In a statement issued Tuesday, CBS said Colbert’s show “was provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates” in the March 3 Democratic primary, “and presented options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled.” Thereafter, the network noted, it was decided “to present the interview through its YouTube channel with on-air promotion on the broadcast rather than potentially providing the equal-time options.”
Talarico, a critic of President Donald Trump, posted a nearly minute-long clip of his interview with Colbert on X and called it “the interview Donald Trump didn’t want you to see.”
What does equal time mean?
The Communications Act of 1934, the wide-ranging legislation that for nearly a century has broadly governed use of the nation’s airwaves, includes a provision that applies specifically to coverage of political candidates. If a station gives airtime to one candidate, then the same station must offer comparable time to other candidates competing in the given contest, should they ask for it.
It also delves into campaign advertising airtime sold by stations and networks. If a station sells airtime to one candidate, then it also has to offer to sell the same amount of time to other candidates for the same office.
There are exceptions to this rule, including newscasts, “bona fide” interview programs, coverage of live events or documentaries. But if candidates host TV shows or appear in non-news, entertainment programming, that does trigger the provision.
Equal time also only applies to broadcast television and radio. So pieces on cable, streaming services or social media aren’t included.
How the Trump administration has treated equal time
The rule requiring networks to give equal time to political candidates hasn’t traditionally been applied to talk shows, but the Trump administration has made moves to change that.
In January, the Federal Communications Commission issued new guidance warning late-night and daytime hosts that they need to give political candidates equal time, with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr questioning the talk show exemption and positing that hosts were “motivated by partisan purposes.”
“The FCC has not been presented with any evidence that the interview portion of any late night or daytime television talk show program on air presently would qualify for the bona fide news exemption,” according to the public notice.
FCC eyes talk shows like ‘The View’
The notice also said that television networks would need to apply for exemptions for individual programs.
In his comments, Colbert noted that the equal time provision applies to broadcast but not streaming platforms. Subsequently, his nearly 15-minute interview with Talarico was posted to the YouTube page for Colbert’s show, with the host noting specifically that the segment was only appearing online and not on broadcast.
Carr, appointed by Trump to lead the agency last year, has often criticized network talk shows, suggesting last year that probing ABC’s “The View” — whose hosts have frequently been critical of Trump — over the exemption might be “worthwhile.”
The FCC did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment Tuesday.
What about the Fairness Doctrine?
Created by the FCC in 1949, this rule mandated that broadcasters present contrasting viewpoints when covering publicly important and controversial issues. Unlike the equal time provision of the Communications Act, this was an FCC rule, not a law.
It didn’t apply specifically to political candidates, but topics. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the doctrine on a First Amendment challenge in 1969, with the court writing that the limited availability of broadcast spectrum justified regulation.
In 1987, the FCC repealed the rule, arguing that spectrum scarcity was no longer an issue, and then-President Ronald Reagan vetoed Congress’ attempt to codify it into law.
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Associated Press reporter David Bauder contributed to this report.
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Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP
The Dictatorship
President Trump spoke to Live Nation CEO before antitrust case was settled, company lawyers reveal
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump spoke personally with the chief executive of Live Nation in the weeks before the Justice Department abruptly settled its longstanding antitrust lawsuit against the entertainment giant and its Ticketmaster subsidiary, the company revealed in a court filing.
Lawyers for Live Nation told the court on Monday that Trump and the company’s CEO, Michael Rapino, spoke about the antitrust lawsuit in February, but didn’t discuss “substantive terms” of any potential settlement.
They also said that White House lawyers were involved in some of the numerous in-person meetings, videoconferences, telephone calls and written communications between the company and the Justice Department in February and March.
Just days into the March trial, the Justice Department announced a settlement that most states refused to join, saying it did not go far enough to curb the company’s dominance over concert venues and ticketing for live events though Ticketmaster.
The trial continued, and a jury concluded several weeks later that the company was a monopoly that cost concertgoers and sports fans.
The White House declined to comment on Live Nation’s disclosure, referring questions to the Justice Department, which didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
The revelation comes as the Justice Department has faced criticism that its independence has been threatened by substantial oversight or interference from the White House and the president.
The Justice Department and dozens of states originally teamed up to bring the antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation.
Among other things, the jury in New York found Ticketmaster’s anticompetitive practices led to people in 22 states paying an extra $1.72 per ticket, which the judge could order the companies to pay back.
State attorneys general who sued Live Nation said the verdict could potentially lead to lower ticket prices for music fans.
The federal government’s settlement deal included a cap on service fees at some amphitheaters, plus some new ticket-selling options for promoters and venues — potentially allowing, but not requiring, them to open doors to Ticketmaster competitors such as SeatGeek or AXS.
In April, Live Nation said in a statement that the verdict “is not the last word on this matter.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance say their interim deal to end the war with Iran will deliver a financial windfall to American farmers.
But the Iranians deny it. And in the absence of more details, sanctions experts are flummoxed over exactly how billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian assets would make their way to the American heartland from the escrow accounts where they’ve been locked for years by U.S. sanctions.
A tentative agreement reached last week would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas once passed, and allow Iran to start selling its oil freely again during a 60-day period when the two countries will continue negotiating key issues. The memorandum of understanding also promised to unfreeze Iranian assets.
Trump’s deal has come under fire for failing to address the reasons the president cited for going to war with Iran on Feb. 28, including curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, its missile program and its support for militant groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
Lashing back at critics Tuesday on his Truth Social media platform, Trump said U.S. farmers would get a payday: The U.S. Treasury Department, he wrote, would release the Iranian assets “into escrow, controlled by the U.S.A., and will be used for the purchase of food and medical supplies, exclusively from the United States, including Corn, Wheat, and Soybeans from our great American farmers. These are things that are desperately needed by Iran.’’
Vance, who spoke about the proposal after high-level talks in Switzerland, and Trump say that any frozen funds and assets held outside of Iran will be used to buy U.S. crops.
But the Iranians deny that’s part of the deal. A spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said any agricultural purchases would be based on “prices and quality,’’ not terms dictated by Washington.
“It is interesting that the philosophy and goal of the war, which was the destruction of the Iranian civilization and the collapse of Iran, has become enriching American farmers,” Baghaei said.
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Iran’s ambassador in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, rejected Vance’s contention that the U.S. and Qatar would dictate how Iran uses unfrozen funds. “Iran is the only country who decides what to do with those assets,” he told reporters.
A U.S. official dismissed the contradiction, asserting that Iranian leaders were speaking to their domestic audience. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.
Joseph Glauber, a research fellow emeritus at the International Food Policy Research Institute, said Iran was unlikely to abandon its other trade partners on food.
Iran’s major suppliers include Brazil, India, Turkey, the European Union, Canada, Australia and Argentina, he said. Trump’s demand to buy from the U.S. would “create some hard feelings with some of our competitors.”
Under previous sanctions, the U.S. has required that money foreign countries spend on imports from Iran — such as South Korean purchases of oil and Iraqi purchases of Iranian electricity — be locked in escrow accounts and typically released only if the Treasury approves and if the proceeds go toward “non-sanctionable’’ items such as food and medicine.
On Monday, the U.S. Treasury approved the sale of Iranian oil, petrochemicals and petroleum products through Aug. 21. It did not mention any escrow accounts.
Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who coordinated efforts to put diplomatic pressure on Iran in the first Trump administration, said in a post on X that he would welcome “a clarification that Iran is actually restricted to only buying U.S. agricultural products.”
Richard Nephew, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said it’s unclear what the new U.S.-Iran agreement actually means for releasing restricted Iranian assets.
Could the U.S. require that the assets be used to buy American farm products?
“Well, we can try!’’ Nephew, who helped design Iran sanctions in the Obama and Biden administrations, said by email. “All you really need to do is to tell a foreign bank that they can move the money but only to a U.S. bank to buy soybeans or whatever.”
Banks do not have to comply, he said. If they refuse, the U.S. could sanction them as well.
But it’s rare for the U.S. to conduct itself that way, he added, “in part because we don’t usually like to give the impression that we treat national security issues as a cash grab.”
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Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.
Wednesday marks four years since the Supreme Court issued its landmark Dobbs decisionwhich effectively overturned Roe v. Wade and repealed the constitutional right to an abortion. On “Morning Joe,” co-host Mika Brzezinski explained how the ruling set off a domino effect across the United States, affecting not just abortion-related care, but also altering “the state of women’s healthcare as a whole.”
As Brzezinski noted, states across the country have enacted harsher abortion restrictions since the 2022 ruling, with 13 outright banning the procedure with very limited exceptions. This has created a climate of fear among those who treat pregnant patients, with many healthcare providers worrying that any care involving an abortion could violate the law, even when the mother’s health is at risk.
“We are talking about people dying when they’re miscarrying because doctors are too afraid to intervene and save their lives,” Amy Littlefield, abortion access correspondent for The Nation, told MS NOW.
Brzezinski said the laws have effectively limited women’s “access to lifesaving healthcare.”
The MS NOW host reflected on some high-profile stories of pregnant women who faced delayed care in states with near-total abortion bans, noting “the numbers of cases that we’ve covered here on the show of women who have had their lives threatened, have been forced to give birth to dying or dead babies, and then, by the way, denied the access to ever create life again, because they became sterilized in the process.”
“There’s an image I can’t get out of my head,” Brzezinski added, before sharing reporting from ProPublica about Porsha Ngumezi, a 35-year-old mother who died in Texas in 2023 after not receiving timely care for a miscarriage.
“For months afterward, Porsha’s 3-year-old son would chase after women who looked like her on the street, shouting, ‘That’s Mommy!’” Brzezinski said. “That’s the detail I can’t forget. I can’t stop imagining that little boy chasing after strangers on the street. And that story repeats itself.”
You can watch Brzezinski’s full comments in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”
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