Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr said at a press event Wednesday that he got a big laugh when he looked back at the way CBS “Late Show” Host Stephen Colbert used a hoax to manipulate the media this week.
Rebuking the legacy media’s blind regurgitation of Colbert’s claim that CBS prohibited him from airing an interview with Democrat Texas Senate primary candidate James Talarico because the FCC banned the interview, Chairman Carr pointed out that even CBS says that neither the network nor the FCC prevented Colbert from airing the interview.
Instead, the media-savvy Rep. Talarico (D-Texas) and Colbert played a hilarious hoax on the all-too-predictable media, Carr explained.
“When I stepped back and looked at the entire arch of the news story yesterday, I was highly entertained. I think it was one of the most fun days I’ve had on the job, watching for the hilarity of how this story played out,” Carr said:
“Look, anybody that’s not suffering from a terminal case of Trump Derangement Syndrome could see, right away yesterday, the exact story arch and how it was going to play out.
“You had a Democrat candidate who understood the way that the news media work. And he took advantage of all of your prior conceptions to run a hoax, apparently for the purpose of raising money and getting clicks – and the news media played right into it.”
“Yesterday was a perfect encapsulation of why the American people have more trust in gas station sushi than they do in the national news media,” Carr said, mocking the way media were duped into doing the bidding of Colbert and Talarico:
“And, this was very plainly an effort ginned up to get clicks and to raise money. And you guys ate it up like slop.”
What’s more, the media are still refusing to correct their misreporting - even now that the facts have come out - Carr said:
“And when it was pointed out that the facts were completely different than what the fake news media was running with, nobody did an about-face and did a fact-correction.”
“And, again, I think this is why the American people simply don’t trust the news media, anymore,” the FCC chairman explained.
On Monday, Colbert claimed on his late-night talk show that CBS had prohibited him from airing Talarico’s interview because of the FCC’s equal-time rule, which says broadcasters can’t influence elections by promoting one candidate over another.
In this case, following the rule would have simply meant providing airtime to other Democrats (Talarico’s Democrat primary opponents).
In fact, however, CBS had explained to Colbert that he had multiple options that would have allowed him to air the interview.
“As they advised Colbert, there’s lots of ways that you can do this, including having all the legally qualified candidates on,” Carr said, noting that the candidates wouldn’t even have to appear on the same show or at the same time.
“But, for some reason, they chose not to do this,” Carr said.
“But again, there was one partisan candidate who fed this slop to mainstream national news media and you guys ran for it,” Carr said, chiding the gullible reporters who fell for the hoax:
“And I was just laughing, because watching it was clear that this story was going to turn at some point and the truth was going to come out.”
“Congress passed the equal-time provision for a very specific reason: they didn’t want the media elites in Hollywood and New York to put their thumb on the scale and pick the winners and losers in primaries and general elections,” Carr said:
“The whole idea here is more speech, not less.
“You can have more candidates on, you can have zero censorship with the equal-time provision. It’s about empowering people.”
