CBS didn't air Rep. James Talarico interview out of fear of FCC
- It is a great illustration of how transition to the authoritarianism happens (I've seen it happen in Russia in 2000s). At first you don't even need censorship, you just need to scare owners of channels/newspapers enough, so that they self-censor.
by MyHonestOpinon
2 subcomments
- The interview in YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiTJ7Pz_59A
- I'm sure the CBS political officer^W^Wombudsman advised against airing the interview:
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/12/nx-s1-5537152/cbs-news-elliso...
by web-cowboy
4 subcomments
- Rough spot in time to be:
- Once print newspapers were no longer a thing, even local news outlets are struggling to stay alive, and are resulting to sensationalism and entertainment as news
- Corporate sponsors retain a huge influence in mainstream news (or have outright purchased it and use it for partisan politics).
- "Social" media resides in (you guessed it) corporate-owned walled gardens.
- Even those willing to speak out are being targeted by federal agencies
Wondering where others are finding great places to learn what's going on, what's actually relevant to me, and what I can actually do about it.
- Weird how Larry Ellison manages to do this to everything he touches
by DeepYogurt
3 subcomments
- Smacks of state media control don't it?
- We had little marco rubio (not capitalised on purpose) over here in Europe lecturing us about freedom of speech. Every accusation is a confession.
by calgarymicro
1 subcomments
- > Carr suggested the exemption should no longer apply to programs he characterized as being “motivated by partisan purposes.”
I know the timing makes this seem cravenly partisan, but revoking an exemption like this could be motivated by a desire to ensure fairn-
> while the FCC chair was targeting late-night talk shows, he had made clear that right-wing talk radio would not be subject to the equal time notice.
Ah, well.
by juliusceasar
0 subcomment
- USA turned into China, Russia and soon N-Korea.
You are not allowed to say anything bad about the current administration and Israel. Little country pulling the strings here.
by signatoremo
1 subcomments
- The interview is on YT. Instead of complaining here, share it with your network
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiTJ7Pz_59A
- Reminder that the most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance.
Support for such measures (welfare, healthcare, unionization, high taxes etc) is usually low among Americans.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/welfare-cuts...
- That's insane. We're talking about the government threatening a station if they air an interview with a political rival.
by legitster
1 subcomments
- From Umberto Eco's essay on Fascism:
> On the morning of July 27, 1943, I was told that, according to radio reports, fascism had collapsed and Mussolini was under arrest. When my mother sent me out to buy the newspaper, I saw that the papers at the nearest newsstand had different titles. Moreover, after seeing the headlines, I realized that each newspaper said different things. I bought one of them, blindly, and read a message on the first page signed by five or six political parties — among them the Democrazia Cristiana, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Partito d’Azione, and the Liberal Party.
> Until then, I had believed that there was a single party in every country and that in Italy it was the Partito Nazionale Fascista. Now I was discovering that in my country several parties could exist at the same time. Since I was a clever boy, I immediately realized that so many parties could not have been born overnight, and they must have existed for some time as clandestine organizations.
What I think is fascinating here in this case isn't just the suppression of any old free speech, it's trying to hide the presence of political options.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7
0 subcomment
- Airing on broadcast TV (cf. publishing on YouTube) does not offer the same opportunity for surveillance of the audience
- Recall it was the same lawnmower^W Ellison-owned CBS that last minute pulled a 60 Minutes report on CECOT. They didn't blame that one on the government.
Given that, I believe the higher ups at CBS wanted this to happen, but are colluding with the executive branch or misrepresenting the situation to shift responsibility.
- The prob has always been the FCC didnt recognize the internet as a Broadcast Medium. Which it is. Anyone can get their message out to a billion people if the algos deem its going to make the platform money. This means the platform support 1 to All messaging ie Broadcast. Thanks to Claude Shannon we know if everyone is given free broadcast capability like giving everyone a mic connected to the same sound system, without a coordination mechanism we get massive noise. How do ppl react to not being heard? They shout louder and louder or keep repeating their message. Amplifying the noise even more. Thats exactly whats happening on the internet today. We had the same issue with radio back in the day when anyone could stick tower on their roof and start broadcasting. This is why Spectrum gets licensed to solve the interference and noise problem. Americans are fed from birth that Free Speech is a right. But no one tells people before the internet Broadcast was not free. You either owned a newspaper, radio station, TV/sat spectrum to broadcast. There is a serious category error happening because the FCC didnt recognize the platforms are really broadcast mediums.
- This is how you get a candidate’s name out there. Master stroke by CBS. :/
by throwgrammar
1 subcomments
- Weird, I thought America was the land of the free and the home of the brave?
- Unlimited Free Speech, itty bitty living space. - Aladdin's Genie
by lenerdenator
6 subcomments
- Well, what can the average person do to get CBS to air it?
by martythemaniak
1 subcomments
- I know things may look bleak, but America has a large, loud, well-funded contingent of free-speech advocates. As soon as Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Thomas Chatterton Williams hear about this, there'll be hell to pay!
by CGMthrowaway
5 subcomments
- [flagged]
- [flagged]
- "In an emailed statement, CBS said: “THE LATE SHOW was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Rep. James Talarico. The show was provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and presented options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled. THE LATE SHOW decided to present the interview through its YouTube channel with on-air promotion on the broadcast rather than potentially providing the equal-time options."
Show me the Fascism, please.
by outside1234
0 subcomment
- All we need now is for zompolits* to be attached to all companies and we too can raise the sickle and hammer!
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_commissar
- It's a terrible look for CBS. At the same time, I find it unbelievable that they don't fire Colbert. This is obvious gross insubordination, and he is an employee.
His final show is coming in May, and I'm sure that they can expect Colbert to continue to embarrass them (as the spineless sycophants they are) every week until then. It's a tremendous self own.
- we'll need more facts but if there is substance to this then the reaction from Bari Weiss (now cbs news editor-in-chief and a long-time public advocate of free speech) and team will be interesting.
by 1970-01-01
4 subcomments
- "Didn't air" doesn't mean what you think it means. It means the interview didn't go over the airwaves via broadcast towers. The full interview is online, which thanks to the Streisand effect already has millions of views and therfore helped CBS in terms of funding. This can be seen as a 4D chess move by CBS. They'll certainly do this again if they're hitting millions of views.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiTJ7Pz_59A
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