There was a lot of righteous, unrighteous and more than a lot of uninformed indignation recently over the fact that an interview of James Talarico, a Democrat candidate for Senator in Texas, was pulled from the airwaves.
Of course, it would be Stephen Colbert who did the interview, and of course, he threw a hissy fit and took aim at his favorite punching bag, President Donald Trump.
His claim was that the federal government ordered the interview pulled, and since the president is in charge, when they feel it necessary to fit their blame game, he ordered it simply to twist a knife in the back of Colbert and, as every Democrat, liberal and denizen of TikTok would ultimately claim, into the back of the First Amendment right of free press, speech and whatever other right you want to cobble onto that.
One of the many questions that leapt to mind was, “How would Trump know what interview was scheduled?” Then I answered it by saying, “He didn’t, but why let facts get in the way of a good outrage?”
On the other hand, CBS, the broadcast entity that has the soon-to-be-mothballed Colbert show in its stable of “entertainment,” said that after a herd of lawyers got together, they mentioned that the interview could put the network in the crosshairs of the FCC and its equal time rule, and suggested — not demanded, or as news parlance goes, spiked — that since there are other candidates, Colbert might rethink things.
Colbert then hissied, and ran the interview on YouTube, where the equal time rule didn’t apply.
Try as I might, I cannot get to the idea that this was an abridgement of freedom of speech, or of the press, or, since he’s liberal, religion, but for me, that isn’t the actual biggest question that needs to be answered.
For me, I have to ask why the government acts as a steward for and regulates airwaves, and why, like my parents doling out allowance, there is a need for equality in this kind of broadcast. While the claim is that the airwaves belong to the public, who said that the federal government needed to license broadcasters and manage the entirety of the electromagnetic spectrum?
If we the people own said airwaves, why is the government and not the people getting the license fees? Why did they figure that they were the entity that could “ensure orderly use” and “prevent interference?”
Is there some specific, American-only set of airwaves that end at the border that the government is guarding?
In a 1943 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that the government could regulate broadcasting because of the “scarcity of frequencies,” a ruling that to me is just one hand telling the other it was OK to clap. But just like climate, the government feels that more than a few laws and ridiculous regulations can keep the airwaves and global warming safe from enemies hell-bent on interrupting “Gilligan’s Island” reruns.
In short, complaining about an interview running afoul of government regulation is closing the barn door after the horse is gone. Sure, it may be cathartic, but it is and will always be completely ineffective. Better to rein in government overreach.
Tony Farkas is editor of the Trinity County News-Standard and the San Jacinto News-Times. He can be reached at tony@polkcountypublishing.com.
