Donald Trump is escalating his crusade to use government power to “police journalism” and “silence opposition,” said The New York Times in an editorial. Last month, CBS warned late-night host Stephen Colbert against airing a pretaped interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, saying it would violate the regulation known as the “equal time rule.” CBS axed the segment out of fear of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, an über Trump partisan who has decreed that late-night talk shows like Colbert’s and Jimmy Kimmel’s are subject to the equal time rule. The rule, which dates to 1927, requires any broadcast outlet giving airtime to one political candidate to grant identical time to opponents. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission has menacingly accused news aggregator Apple News of favoring liberal outlets over conservative ones, and launched an investigation into Media Matters, a left-leaning group that has criticized the racism and anti-semitism on Elon Musk’s X. Make no mistake: The Trump administration is pursuing “a hostile takeover of the marketplace of ideas.”
“It’s not just news organizations and journalists that are being targeted” by right-wing “cancel culture,” said Guy Chazan in the Financial Times. National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett recently threatened to “discipline” economists working at the New York Fed for accurately reporting that U.S. businesses and consumers shoulder most of the costs of Trump’s tariffs. The Department of Homeland Security has issued hundreds of administrative subpoenas to Google, Reddit, Discord, and Meta, seeking personal information on users who criticize or track ICE agents. The First Amendment is under serious assault, said David A. Graham in The Atlantic. Carr isn’t enforcing the equal time rule on broadcast radio, which relentlessly defends Trump and attacks Democrats. The FCC and FTC are only targeting “speech by critics of the president, his party, or his policies.”
Republican complaints about anti-Trump bias are “comically ridiculous,” said Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch. The president “functionally commands” a vast multimedia empire promoting pro-Trump bias, extending across cable networks like Fox News and Newsmax, to nearly all of broadcast talk radio, and to “too many internet house organs to count.” Remember: One day, the Democrats will regain power, and now have ample precedent to enforce the equal time rule on Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and all of talk radio.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.