FCC seeking public comment amid battle with 'The View'

• The FCC's chairman announced action against ABC in line with its equal time rules in February. The network asked the FCC to declare "The View" exempt from such rules in a May petition.
• The commission has been split on "The View," with Carr describing the probe as a procedural matter and Commissioner Anna Gomez characterizing the actions as politically motivated.
• The commission is seeking comment in part on whether the show’s decision-making appears to be “based on newsworthiness or on an attempt to oppose or support particular candidates.”

The Federal Communications Commission is accepting public input on whether ABC’s “The View” should be exempt from a requirement to offer equal broadcast opportunities to political candidates, according to a May 22 public notice.  

It follows ABC and KTRK-TV, its Houston affiliate station, requesting that the FCC “expeditiously affirm that ‘The View’ continues to qualify for the bona fide news interview exemption” in a May 7 petition to the FCC. 

The Communications Act of 1934 established the equal opportunity rule for both radio and later television. It was amended in 1959 to exempt newscasts, news interviews, news documentaries and on-the-spot coverage of news events from that requirement.   

The FCC said in January that daytime and late-night television talk shows do not have a blanket exemption. Its public notice said the commission had once determined that the interview segment of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” qualified for the news interview exemption but asserted that singular decision has been interpreted and applied too broadly in the years since. 

FCC Chair Brendan Carr announced the following month that the commission had taken action against ABC in line with equal time rules after state Rep. James Talarico, D-Texas, appeared on “The View” while running in the state’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary. 

Carr described the matter as a procedural issue during the FCC’s open meeting in March. Disney-owned ABC, he said, had not submitted the proper filing declaring an appearance by a political candidate that would then open the window for an opposing candidate to request “comparable time and placement.” 

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, appointed by President Joe Biden in 2023, rejected Carr’s characterization during the meeting, accusing the FCC under President Donald Trump’s administration of “using the equal time rule as a way to harass broadcasters for content that it disfavors.” 

ABC’s May 7 filing said the equal opportunity rule in the current context is “in serious tension with the First Amendment” and that the FCC's “actions threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech, both with respect to ‘The View’ and more broadly.” 

Carr wrote in a May 22 X post that television shows do not qualify for the exemption “if their decisions are based on partisan purposes, such as an intention to advance or harm an individual’s candidacy.”  

Gomez also said on May 22 that the FCC was “once again targeting an administration critic by mob rule."

“Let’s not pretend this FCC hasn’t already made up its mind,” Gomez wrote in an X post. “All they want is for their pro-censorship partisan allies to nod in agreement. My message to Disney: Don’t flinch. Fight.” 

The public notice said the commission is seeking comment on whether "The View" qualifies as a bona fide news program, whether the equal time rule “(passes) relevant constitutional scrutiny, either as a general matter or as applied here,” and whether the show’s decision-making appears to be “based on newsworthiness or on an attempt to oppose or support particular candidates.” 

Comments can be submitted through the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System. The deadline to submit comments is June 22. 

USA TODAY reached out to ABC for comment.  

BrieAnna Frank is a First Amendment reporter at USA TODAY. Reach her at [email protected]. 

USA TODAY's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.