Stephen Colberts CBS Reveal Should Send a Chill Down Your Spine

Stephen Colbert, the host of News’ “Late Show,” was incredibly blunt when he told his audience Monday why he couldn’t show them an interview he did with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico.

Colbert said News lawyers called him and told him directly that he could not air the interview because of threats from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, Colbert said. Carr had previously stated that he could repeal the rule that treats talk show interviews with political candidates as “news” and instead hold the shows to a standard that would require them to give equal time to opposing sides. In reality, that rule has not been modified.

“My network is unilaterally enforcing it as if it were done,” Colbert said. “But I want to assure you, ladies and gentlemen, please, I want to assure you that this decision is due to purely financial reasons.”

This is just the latest in a saga of how the Trump administration is abusing executive branch regulatory authorities to suppress dissenting voices and taking advantage of corporate America’s pursuit of monopoly power.

What Colbert meant was that News is bowing to political pressure because of Paramount Skydance, the network’s parent company. Recently created when Donald Trump megadonor Larry Ellison and his son David Ellison bought Paramount, the network, which already announced it would end Colbert’s own show (which it attributed, again, to “financial reasons” rather than Colbert’s prominent criticism of Trump), is actively trying to curry favor with the Trump administration in its bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. The FCC, headed by Carr, approves mergers of media companies.

News denied in a statement that Colbert was prohibited from airing Talarico’s interview.

“News did not ban THE LATE SHOW from airing the interview with Rep. James Talarico,” the statement said. “The show received legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC’s equal time rule for two other candidates, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and presented options for how equal time could be met for other candidates. THE LATE SHOW decided to feature the interview through its YouTube channel with on-air promotion on the broadcast rather than potentially offering equal time options.”

Richard Shotwell via News

Just as Colbert launched his broadside against his own company, “60 Minutes,” also under the News umbrella, lost its most well-known collaborator when Anderson Cooper announced he was stepping down to focus on his CNN show and spend more time with his family. But Media reporter Oliver Darcy reported that Cooper left because of the “rightward direction the network has taken” and management’s increasing interference with “60 Minutes” reporting.

By pressuring media companies to censor content with regulatory threats, Trump’s FCC seeks to limit how critics access the airwaves, whether they are opposition politicians, comedians, or just dissidents in general. Is reminiscent of Viktor Orban’s Hungarywhere state public and private media allied to the regime provide only five minutes of airtime to opposition politicians every four years.

The reasoning used may vary: Carr’s FCC also opened an investigation on Feb. 7 on ABC’s “The View” for allegedly breaking the same rule about equal time by hosting Talarico without offering equal time to the other Democratic candidate and eight Republican candidates in the Texas Senate race. But ABC’s late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel temporarily suspended in December after Carr tried to get him fired for innocuous comments about murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk, and threatened to withdraw ABC’s broadcast license if he wasn’t fired.

The capitulation of the News has been the most visible and flagrant example. Since it was acquired by Skydance when it merged with Paramount, News leadership under newly installed conservative Bari Weiss, hired by David Ellison despite having no broadcast news experience, has been happy to contort to the administration’s wishes as Ellison seeks further media consolidation.

The first case occurred when Paramount He agreed to pay Trump $16 million. in a legal settlement over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Most legal observers believed the lawsuit was meritless, but the company reached a settlement just as the Skydance acquisition faced final regulatory approval. Both management and Paramount deny that the deal and approval of the merger were related.

Then Colbert’s show, No. 1 in its time slot, was abruptly canceled on July 17 with an end date of March 2026, just days after he criticized that deal.

“I love that they fired Colbert,” Trump published online after.

News continued to distort its coverage following a Trump attack on Paramount Skydance after it opened its hostile takeover bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery away from Netflix on December 8.

“For those people who think I’m close to the new owners of News, please understand that 60 Minutes has treated me much worse since the so-called ‘acquisition’ than ever before,” Trump said. wrote on December 16. “If they are friends, I would hate to see my enemies!”

That weekend Weiss released a segment of “60 minutes” three hours before it aired that exposed the human rights violations that occurred when the Trump administration handed over more than 200 Venezuelan and Salvadoran immigrants to the brutal CECOT prison in El Salvador. Weiss said the segment needed more balance from management sources.

The segment finally aired on January 18 on short notice and in front of a highly anticipated NFL playoff game.