San Francisco, United States – In a November 2024 appearance on ABC's popular daytime show The View, host Sunny Hostin asked then-Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris if she would do anything differently than President Joe Biden. Harris said, “I can't think of anything.”
By that time, analysts said, Harris had become inextricably linked to the economic hardships voters faced during the Biden administration and his other failures. Harris lost the election and returned to the show a year later to say, “I realize now that I didn't fully appreciate what a problem it was.” In his book 107 Days, Harris compared his statement to removing the pin from a hand grenade.
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While Harris' appearance may not have helped her electoral prospects, Donald Trump, then the Republican presidential candidate, did not appear on The View before the 2024 election or in its previous two elections.
Daytime and late-night shows are generally bound by a U.S. Communications Act rule requiring political candidates to have equal access to airtime, but The View may have been an exemption because it could be viewed as a “genuine news program,” and those are exempt from that requirement.
But in the last year, The View, Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Kimmel Live and other shows have been in the eye of the Federal Communications Commission for failing to provide equal access and possibly providing partisan coverage. But critics say the FCC's attempts to control such programs could amount to a restriction on free speech. That, along with increasing corporate consolidation of media ownership, could make them vulnerable to regulatory intervention and a rollback in press freedom, as has been seen in countries such as Hungary and Russia.
The FCC released a public notice in late January saying concerns had been raised that the interview portions of all daytime and late-night programs were exempt from the equal opportunity requirement. “This is not the case,” the FCC notice said, encouraging stations to “obtain formal assurance” that they are exempt from providing equal access.
But such processes could be “a tool of harassment and intimidation,” said Harold Field, senior vice president of Public Knowledge, a left-wing think tank based in Washington, DC.
With the notice and the petition process on hold, broadcasters can rethink “which perspectives to air and which not to air,” said Seth Stern, chief advocacy officer at the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
Gigi Sohn, an attorney who formerly worked at the FCC, said, “I like the spirit of the notice,” referring to the principle of giving lesser-known candidates equal access to air time, “but the impact could be censorship. I'm concerned about how it will be enforced.”
“It costs money to defend principles”
The FCC notice stems from the Communications Act of 1934, which said that since all three stations were receiving public airwaves, if a station provided space to a political candidate, it would have to provide equal opportunity to all other candidates for that office. Broadcasters would have to maintain a public file on the time off given to a candidate so that other candidates could review it and claim their same time off as well.
When John Kennedy appeared on the Tonight Show in 1959, the FCC had ruled that the other candidates should be given equal time. By 2006, when Arnold Schwarznegger appeared on the Tonight Show while running for governor of California, more talk shows had filled the airwaves and blurred the line between news and entertainment. The FCC had ruled that The Tonight Show was exempt from the equal time rule as a bona fide news interview.
The FCC's January notice said the industry has taken this to mean that all daytime and late-night programs are exempt because they are genuine news programs, but they are not.
“To state the obvious, Jimmy Kimmel Live is not Meet The Press. Not even close. Not even close,” wrote Daniel Suhr, president of the Center for American Rights, a right-wing think tank based in Chicago, in a blog post for the Yale Regulatory Journal.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr also tweeted that such programs had requested waivers “even when motivated by partisan political purposes.” Right-wing analysts cited a study that said The View only had two conservative guests in 2025, while it had 128 liberal guests. A media representative for The View did not respond to Al Jazeera's request for comment.
But others are concerned that the notice is part of a broader effort to limit satire, comedy and commentary.
“This, to me, is the most shocking element of what this administration has been able to do: say that opinions, satire and humor are censored,” said Margot Susca, an assistant professor of journalism at American University in Washington, DC.
Posting such notices could push broadcasters' parent organizations to limit their content, analysts say, citing instances of how the Paramount Skydance merger was approved only after a lawsuit over Harris' 60 Minutes interview was settled.
“For-profit corporations are not known for their bravery,” said Public Knowledge's Field. “They can keep their heads down and their eyes under control.”
Berkeley's Davis said that “it costs money to defend principles” and that the administration's “understanding of the financial needs of media corporations is unprecedented.”
Large corporations often have pending mergers or licensing issues, Sohn said, “so departments can pull a pound of meat when there isn't even a problem.”
The notice may also “aim to drive a wedge between broadcasters and affiliates,” Sohn argued. “It could be that Disney asks Kimmel not to have political candidates, or that the affiliate can get ahead of the show since the burden also falls on the stations.”
Sohn had been nominated by Biden for the FCC, but withdrew her nomination after a lengthy and tense confirmation process.
Last fall, when Kimmel made comments about Charlie Kirk's murder, FCC Commissioner Carr said affiliates could skip ahead or drop out, which Nextstar and Sinclair, the two largest television station owners, did. Even after a public outcry reinstated Kimmel's show, the two didn't get it back for days.
“Public outrage is the best tonic,” Sohn said, referring to the outcry that led ABC to bring back Kimmel. “But there are so many abuses.”
'Control the narrative'
While broadcast licenses for free airwaves carry a public service responsibility, the FCC notice said daytime and late-night programs have been partisan.
But others, like Berkeley's Davis, say ads like this serve to “control the narrative, not inform the public.”
“The executive branch has become so powerful and the increasing concentration of media ownership in corporate hands has created two forms of power that have colluded in ways that undermine the independence of the media,” he told Al Jazeera.
It's a pattern that American University's Susca said he has seen in other countries with declining democratic standards and that he has written about in his upcoming book Media Plutocracy, to be published by the University of Massachusetts Press.
“Hungary was the most obvious example where media ownership was concentrated in the hands of wealthy people aligned with President Orban,” he said. “This led to restrictions on the media and meant that media independence disappeared and any responsibility for journalism disappeared in 15 years of Orban.”
Stern of the Press Freedom Foundation said that while there are comparisons to developments in Russia and Hungary, where media takeovers have been directed toward favorable owners, leading to a decline in media independence, these are not the only such cases.
“There is a lot of precedent. Some of the things we are seeing are old and some are new, but the value of these comparisons is limited because Trump is a unique figure in a unique era.”
More conservative analysts have accused the media of having a liberal bias that they have struggled to correct. For example, when Harris appeared on a 90-second Saturday Night Live show last year and made jokes that the American public “wants to end the drama,” the Suhr Center for American Rights filed a complaint for just as long. NBC then filed a public filing offering equal time to Trump, who gave a 90-second speech asking voters to vote for him.
The Center for American Rights did not respond to a request for comment from Al Jazeera.
As these battles rage over broadcasters' right to broadcast, Berkeley's Davis noted that “this is a moment of convergence. I watch Kimmel on YouTube,” where viewers could watch the show even when Nextstar and Sinclair didn't broadcast it, and Communications Act rules don't apply.
Viewers of all political persuasions are increasingly turning to social media for news, opinions and humor, data shows.
“I like to talk more, not less. Limiting it could have a worrying impact,” Sohn said.
