Ok, fine. I’ll weigh in.
1. The Equal Time statute doesn’t apply to GameDay for several reasons.
For one, when it passed the statute, Congress applied it to broadcast tv stations—not cable programs like GameDay.
For another, Congress stated that the statute only applies to legally qualified candidates. The Senator is not one.
2. The Equal Time statute does not prohibit anyone from interviewing anyone on broadcast tv. It is about more speech, not less. Congress wanted to ensure that voters would decide elections, not media gatekeepers picking winners and losers by providing preferential airtime to some candidates and not others.
Indeed, when the statute applies, it simply requires broadcast stations to offer comparable time and placement. And comparable does not necessarily mean an interview by the same person on the same program either.
3. This ties back to Talarico. He’s just running the same hoax he did a few months ago on Colbert for the purpose of getting clicks and donations—he’s banking on people not understanding the statute or operating as partisan lemmings.
4. More broadly, though, at least some people appear to take issue with a cable program choosing to interview one government official and not others. To the extent they’re pushing for greater balance in media, that might be a good thing.
But to bring this back to the law, cable shows are different than broadcast programs.
Broadcasters are unique. The FCC gave them free licenses worth many billions of dollars to use a public resource (spectrum). They are given a government sanctioned monopoly on their broadcast frequencies, too. If anyone else wants to use that same public resource (spectrum) for the purpose of expressing their own views, the government will not let them—it will eject anyone else that tries to use a broadcaster’s licensed spectrum.
This means that Americans are subsidizing the distribution of broadcast programs over a public resource to the tune of many billions of dollars. We don’t do that with cable or anything else.
In exchange for that free and exclusive right to use spectrum, broadcasters made a deal with the American people. They agreed to operate, not in their own narrow interests, but in the public interest. There are various rules and policies that they must follow. This sets them apart from newspapers and cable shows and podcasts.
But some broadcasters want to break their deal with the American people. They want to keep their free access to billions of dollars worth of spectrum, of course. They are less eager these days to abide by their public interest obligations.
Yet the Supreme Court has already ruled that holding broadcasters to their public interest obligations is not censorship or any sort of 1A violation.
And Congress has charged the FCC with ensuring that broadcasters meet those public interest obligations, as required by their licenses. The agency should do so.
llama 𝘁𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗼𝘂!
Hey… I think you saw it and decided not to accept.
If that's the case, I get it… just wanted to say I like people like you 🫶
Even from afar 💌
I never imagined I’d be starting over at this point in my life. After being hurt by someone I trusted, I’ve learned that opening your heart again takes both strength and faith.
Canada’s Prime Minister says: “We cannot trust America.”
Meanwhile, his wife lives in the United States, all four of his children live and study in the United States, 91% of his investment portfolio is reportedly tied to the United States, and he owns a home in the United States.
Yet he tells Canadians they can’t trust America.
Hypocrisy at its finest.
BREAKING: The USS Abraham Lincoln has officially and completely run out of gig line. If you’ve never served, you may not understand how serious this is. @USNavy
BREAKING: A same-sex couple is suing their surrogate for $600K after she refused to abort their baby at 22 weeks in Canada.
Scans indicated the child had a cleft lip and a possible heart defect.
The little boy was born healthy.
That child is alive today not because of the men who purchased his life, but because the woman who carried him in her womb protected him.
Children are not commodities. Ban surrogacy now.
⚠️ MUST WATCH: An Iranian-American who escaped Sharia law just delivered a chilling testimony at a Wylie, Texas school board meeting that everyone in the West needs to see.
He breaks down the 3 stages of subversion happening right now:
👉Stage 1: "They come in peace... they tell you 'we just want rights.'"
👉Stage 2: Two-tier policing, Sharia courts, and pushing blasphemy laws (like what we see in the UK and Canada).
👉Stage 3: The final stage, the absolute hell of apostasy laws, executions, and hanging (like what happened to Iran).
"I escaped that hell hole years ago, and I am seeing the exact same thing happening right now in the United States."