ABC Goes to War With the FCC

In other news, hot flashes and celebrity gossip now qualify as hard-hitting journalism.

Trump and ABC are currently in the sort of situationship normally reserved for divorcing couples fighting over the side-by-side burial plots they bought four decades ago. First there was Trump dragging the network into court over George Stephanopoulos’s slanderous on-air characterization of him—a scandal ABC apparently was willing to drop $15 million to make go away. Then came the pressure campaign to fire Jimmy Kimmel for describing Melania as having a “glow like an expectant widow.”

That was swiftly followed by the Federal Communications Commission launching a review into ABC’s broadcast licenses—something the agency claimed had nothing to do with the Kimmel kerfuffle and was simply part of their ongoing investigation into the broadcast giant’s DEI policies. As a result, ABC promptly scheduled a candlelight vigil for free speech and wept into their quarterly earnings report.

Now, the Disney-owned network has filed a petition against the very agency investigating them—accusing the federal government of violating ABC’s First Amendment rights by… wait for it… refusing to recognize The View as a legitimate, hard-hitting news program.

From left to right: Edward R. Murrow, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Walter Cronkite, Clark Kent, and Ron Burgundy.

I am not even making this up.

The gist is this: every two to four years, broadcast television becomes a political battleground—and the federal government has opinions about how that fight gets conducted. Under the federal Equal Time Rule, any network that gives airtime to a political candidate is required to offer comparable airtime to their opponents.

Seems fair. Except… a single category—what the FCC calls “bona fide” [word nerd alert: that’s Latin for “good faith”] news programs—is exempt from this requirement. Programming can be as openly partisan, slanted, ideological, and one-sided as it wants… so long as it qualifies as news rather than entertainment—a determination that’s ultimately made by the FCC.

(If you can make that make sense, there’s a free book in it for you.)

This is where things get awkward for The View, a program that—according to a Media Research Center analysis—hosted 128 liberal guests in 2025 compared to just [*squints at spreadsheet*] two conservatives. Out of 341 total guests, 25 Democratic politicians appeared on the show, while red-state representation amounted to roughly one half of Fleetwood Mac. But they can get away with that without so much as a mea culpa, see, because they’re a bona fide news program.

And I’m the heir to the Crayola fortune.

If The View were to be classified as what it visibly, obviously, and demonstrably is—a shriek of women arguing about current events in between commercials for Febreze plug-ins and prescription allergy medication—ABC could be required to offer equal time to the Republican candidates its hosts spend the majority of the show mocking.

The financial and logistical implications of that are seemingly alarming enough that ABC has decided the better play is to argue, loudly and with a straight face, that Whoopi Goldberg is essentially Walter Cronkite.

“Uncertainty as to the scope of broadcast licensees’ editorial discretion threatens to limit news coverage of political candidates and chill core First Amendment-protected speech for years and potentially decades to come,” ABC wrote. “As the 2026 midterm election approaches, the American people need more access to political news and more exposure to political candidates, not less.”

What makes ABC’s argument so unintentionally hilarious is that the network is essentially warning that if The uber-liberal View is forced to comply with equal-time requirements, they might actually have to platform conservatives and independents—something ABC frames as a terrifying threat to the public’s access to political information. Even though that is, quite literally, the entire point of equal-time rules: not to reduce political speech, but to prevent one side from monopolizing it.

The FCC is basically saying, “Of course you can cuddle up to Zohran Mamdani and Katie Hobbs! Just make sure you block out exactly that much time—same day-part, same placement—for Andrew Cuomo and Kari Lake.” ABC, which would rather broadcast security footage from their Burbank parking garage than give someone like RFK Jr. a microphone, is responding like the birthday kid who’s just realized he has to share his cupcakes with the whole class.

The FCC, for its part, appears deeply unconvinced that federal broadcast law intended the phrase “bona fide journalism” to cover Joy Behar wearing nipple covers over her eyes and talking about merkins.

Nice? No. Accurate? Entirely.

“Decades ago, Congress passed a law that generally prohibits broadcast television programs from putting a thumb on the scale in favor of one political candidate over another,” an FCC spokesperson told Politico. “Specifically, Congress put protections in place to ensure that covered programs offer legally qualified candidates for office (both Republican and Democrat) equal time on the public airwaves. The equal time law encourages more speech and empowers voters to decide the outcome of elections.”

Again, we are talking about The View here. A show which is, depending on the day, a mix of celebrity interviews, hot takes, personal anecdotes, applause breaks, digs at Donald Trump, tales of random dental disasters and accidental flashings, and extended discussions about dating, menopause, family drama, and whether some actress was “brave” for wearing a dollar bill over her eyes at the Met Gala. It’s less unbiased investigative reporting enterprise and more televised book club meeting with commercial breaks and a legal team. Which makes The New York Times dubbing it “the most important political TV show in America” the strongest possible argument for national media reform.

Read the rest here.

And that’s it. That’s the loophole. Classify yourself as “news” and you get special regulatory protections, even if your content largely consists of quasi-celebrities yelling “Did you just point at me?” while the audience erupts like trained sea lions at feeding time. It’s basically the equivalent of buying a press badge at Party City and immediately gaining diplomatic immunity.

Ironically, for years now, networks have insisted many of their most openly ideological personalities are not “journalists” when defending themselves from defamation claims or factual scrutiny. When Tucker Carlson was accused of slander, the judge ruled that given the show’s reputation for hyperbole, no reasonable viewer would take his statements as literal factual assertions. Similarly, Rachel Maddow’s lawyers famously argued in court that anyone with a pulse and basic pattern recognition can see that her show is a mix of exaggeration and opinion and not literal, objective reporting.

EVERY NETWORK UNDER THE SUN: “Tonight, we bring you the most important news from around the world.”

THE WORLD: “So it’s going to be fair, balanced, and one-hundred-percent objective?”

EVERY NETWORK UNDER THE SUN: “Hahahaha you’re cute. No, we just call it news so we can avoid all of those annoying regulatory restrictions.”

And now, after decades of having it both ways, someone finally asked ABC to pick a lane. Cue the hysterics.

Maybe ABC wins because courts and regulators decide it’s simply too messy—and too politically radioactive—to start redefining “news” after spending decades handing out exemptions like free tote bags at a book fair. Maybe the FCC wins and The View suddenly has to start carving out matching airtime for Republicans every time the hosts spend twenty uninterrupted minutes applauding Democrats. Most likely, the government concludes that trying to separate journalism from entertainment in 2026 would be like trying to un-toast bread and just leaves it up to the public to determine what’s propaganda, what’s activism, what’s opinion, and what’s rigorous, old-school reporting.

Anyway, I’m sure it’ll end well.

Swing by the bookstore/tip jar!

P.S. If you missed this weekend’s The Autism Conversation We’re Not Supposed to Have post, you can check it out here.