The Media Research Center tried to pretend it didn’t get played into promoting Stephen Colbert’s interview with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico. comedy cop Alex Christy still appeared to be a little wore about that in a Feb. 19 post:
Those trying to turn CBS’s Stephen Colbert into a free speech martyr for the James Talarico-equal time controversy suffered a setback on Wednesday as Colbert welcomed Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff to The Late Show. Unfortunately, those who would like the late night hosts at least pretend to put in an effort to have some sort of balance on their shows also suffered a setback as the duo warned of impending doom if Democrats don’t win in November.
[…]It’s ironic that Ossoff lamented that television hosts face official censorship while conducting an interview on television with that host. If Colbert and Ossoff want to know why all their warnings of impending authoritarianism fall flat, that would be a good place to start looking.
Christy seems to have forgotten that Colbert is being pulled off the air next month as an apparent condition of CBS’ owner settling a lawsuit with President Trump.
Thte same day, Tim Graham dismissed the contretemps as a “stunt”:
Stephen Colbert is getting the Jimmy Kimmel Free Speech Hero award this week on the leftist cable networks for his stunt putting an interview with Texas state Rep. James Talarico on YouTube instead of CBS. He claimed CBS banned him from putting Talarico on air. Then CBS put out a statement implying Colbert was lying, that they only offered “guidance” about how to fulfill equal-time requirements that might be enforced.
On Tuesday’s The Lead with Jake Tapper,former New York Times reporter Bill Carter and former National Review writer Jonah Goldberg both lined up like good liberals for the Colbert Publicity Train. Tapper tried to glide past Colbert’s claims on “how aggressively they gave that guidance,” but Carter lectured it just had to be Fear of Trump driving everything:
Graham then whined that Colbert didn’t have on enough right-wing guests:
Since 2022, Colbert has put on 214 liberal or Democrat guests to one Republican — if you count Liz Cheney. (Let’s not.) Does anyone think Colbert won’t have another 20 or 30 Trump-trashing liberals on his show before it all ends? The guest list is pretty much unanimous, but the “chilling effect” is the idea that someone (including another leftist) might get equal time?
We don’t recall Graham ever complaining that Fox News hosts like Jesse Watters didn’t have on enough liberal guests.
Graham continued the “stunt” narrative in his Feb. 20 podcast:
It was a good week for NewsBusters issues. In the new eruption of leftist protest over anyone demanding Stephen Colbert provide “Equal Time” to their incessant tilt, we point out again that all the comedy shows tilt dramatically to the left, just like The View.Whoopi Goldberg felt pressed to address the NewsBusters scoop on her place in the Epstein files.
NewsBusters associate editor Nick Fondacaro and MRC Video content creator Nick Kangadis joined the show. While the liberal networks expressed partisan awe and amazement over Colbert’s allegedly masterful interview and controversy-stoking with Texas state Rep. James Talarico, the supreme irony in all of this is that our Alex Christy reports that Colbert’s show since September 2022 has platformed 214 liberals or Democrats, and just one Republican – and that was Liz Cheney, after she left office in defeat. Equal time is never observed in late-night “comedy.” Somehow, democracy is “dying” not from a guest count of 215-0, but that anyone wants to balance it in any way.
This whole controversy was a stunt – a stunt designed to promote Talarico’s bid for the Senate as a sort of Beto O’Rourke 2.0 – as if the original Beto was a winner. If the FCC required “equal time” here right before the primary, the beneficiary would be Rep. Jasmine Crockett, not a Republican. So Colbert’s stunt is anti-Crockett.
But if it was a “stunt,” it was a successful one, as P.J. Gladnick grudgingly admitted:
It’s possible that Politico hasn’t been this happy since the 2020 election was “fortified.”
By pretending to be censored, which did not happen according to CBS, Late Show host Stephen Colbert was able to gain more viewers than usual to his interview on YouTube with the Democrat primary candidate for senator from Texas, James Talarico. Politico briefly acknowledged the trickery involved in their Wednesday Playbook celebration by Dasha Burns and Jack Blanchard, “The Talarico moment.”
[…]So did Colbert refuse to offer equal time to Talarico’s primary opponents? We didn’t find the answer in Politico because they didn’t bother to ask. Perhaps because it would have ruined their celebrations of Colbert pulling off a campaign stunt to obviously help Talarico.
Gladnick did not explain why CBS’ word on Colbert must be trusted, giving thet they’re canceling him next month.
Gladnick was grousing about the “stunt” in a Feb. 28 post by invoking old criticisms of public radio:
After being deprived of its federal funding by Republicans, it’s only natural that NPR is going to sound especially bitter about President Trump engaging in what they claim is “media censorship.” The ruse here is that Stephen Colbert was somehow unable to put leftist Democrat James Talarico on his Late Show because of Trump. But the Trump administration didn’t stop it. CBS’s lawyers warned him it could be an “equal time” violation.
We know what happened next — massive YouTube views for Colbert and Talarico, leading to millions of dollars in donations to Talarico’s Senate campaign against Rep. Jasmine Crockett — who could ask for “equal time.” On Wednesday’s edition of The NPR Politics Podcast, they turned to NPR media reporter David Folkenflik to warn about FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and his expressed aim to investigate “equal time” on remarkably one-sided shows like Colbert’s.
Graham brought up another old grievance after an NPR panelist said “Jimmy Kimmel made some remarks that offended the president’s supporters in the wake of the killing of Charlie Kirk”:
Jimmy Kimmel’s “remarks” were lying about Charlie Kirk’s killer being a “MAGA” bro, the opposite of the truth, hence they “offended” Trump fans. Folkenflik channeled the Left, that “some of the critics are saying that they’re actually self-censoring” because of Trump and Carr.
While Graham did note in the transcript that someone said “we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way” in relation to Kimmel, he was silent on the fact that it was Trump FCC chief Brendan Carr, and Kimmel was suspended for a week after that implied threat.
Graham went on to whine that “Naturally, like other liberals, NPR had to talk about conservative talk-radio shows would fail the ‘equal time’ rules,” insisting without evidence that “Conservative radio hosts would be glad to put some Democrats on their shows for equal time, but how likely is it that the Democrats would accept?!” Has Graham or the MRC ever endorsed equal-time rules being applied to right-wing talk radio? Not that we’re aware.