San Francisco, United States – In a November 2024 appearance on ABC’s popular daytime show, The View, host Sunny Hostin asked Kamala Harris, then the Democratic candidate for president, if she would do anything differently from the president, Joe Biden. Harris said, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”

In this moment, analysts said, Harris had tied herself inextricably with the economic hardships voters faced during the Biden administration and its other failings. Harris lost the election and returned to the show a year later to say, “I realise now that I didn’t fully appreciate how much of an issue it was.” In her book 107 Days, Harris likened her statement to pulling the pin on a hand grenade.

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While Harris’s appearance may not have helped her electoral prospects, Donald Trump, then the Republican presidential nominee, did not appear on The View before the 2024 election or in his previous two elections.

Daytime and late-night shows are usually required by a United States Communications Act rule that political candidates be given equal access to airtime, but The View may possibly have been an exemption because it could be seen as a “bona fide news show”, and those are exempt from that requirement.

But in the last year, The View, Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Kimmel Live and other shows have been in the Federal Communications Commission’s eye for not providing equal access and possibly providing partisan coverage. But critics say the FCC’s attempts to rein in such shows could amount to curtailing of speech. That, along with increasing corporate consolidation of media ownership, could make it vulnerable to regulatory intervention and a backsliding in media freedom, as has been seen in countries such as Hungary and Russia.

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The FCC put out a public notice in late January saying concerns had been raised that the interview portions of all daytime and late-night shows were exempt from the equal opportunities requirement. “This is not the case,” the FCC’s notice said, encouraging stations “to obtain formal assurance” that they are exempt from giving equal access.

But such processes could be “a tool for harassment and intimidation”, said Harold Field, senior vice president at Public Knowledge, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington, DC.

With the notice and the petitioning process hanging, broadcasters may rethink “which perspectives to air and which ones not to”, said Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the Freedom of Press Foundation.

Gigi Sohn, a lawyer who has previously worked in the FCC, said, “I like the spirit of the notice,” referring to the principle of providing lesser-known candidates equal access to airtime, “but the impact could be censorship. I am concerned about how it will be applied.”

‘It costs money to stand up for principle’

The FCC notice stems from the Communications Act of 1934, which said, since the three broadcasters were being provided public airwaves, if a station provides space to one political candidate, it would have to provide equal opportunity to all other candidates for that office. Broadcasters would have to keep a public file on any free time given to a candidate so that other candidates could review this and claim their equal free time, too.

When John Kennedy appeared on the Tonight Show in 1959, the FCC had ruled that equal time was to be given to other candidates. In 2006, by the time Arnold Schwarznegger appeared on the Tonight Show while running for California governor, more talk shows had filled the airwaves and blurred the line between news and entertainment. The FCC had ruled that The Tonight Show was exempt from the equal time rule as a bona fide news interview.

The FCC notice from January said that the industry has taken this to mean that all daytime and late-night shows are exempt because they are bona fide news shows, but they are not.

“To state the obvious, Jimmy Kimmel Live is not Meet The Press. Not by a long shot. Not even close,” Daniel Suhr, president of the Center for American Rights, a right-leaning think tank based in Chicago, wrote in a blog post for the Yale Regulatory Journal.

FCC chair Brendan Carr had also tweeted that such shows had claimed exemptions “even when motivated by partisan political purposes”. Right-wing analysts quoted a study saying The View had only two conservative guests in 2025, while it had 128 liberal guests. A media representative of The View did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

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But others worry that the notice is part of a broader effort to curtail satire, comedy and comment.

“This, to me, is the most shocking element of what this administration has been able to do, is to say that views, satire and humour are censored,” said Margot Susca, assistant professor of journalism at American University in Washington, DC.

Putting out such notices could push the broadcasters’ parent organisations to limit their content, analysts say, citing instances of how the Paramount Skydance merger was approved only after it settled a lawsuit over Harris’s interview on 60 Minutes.

“For-profit corporations are not known for their bravery,” said Public Knowledge’s Field. “They may keep their heads down and views in check.”

Berkeley’s Davis said that “it costs money to stand up for principle,” and that the administration’s “understanding of the financial needs of media corporations is unprecedented.”

Large corporations often have mergers pending or licence issues, said Sohn, “so departments can extract a pound of flesh when there isn’t even an issue.”

The notice may also be “intended to drive a wedge between broadcasters and affiliates”, argued Sohn. “It could be that Disney asks Kimmel not to have political candidates, or the affiliate may preempt the show since the burden also falls on stations.”

Sohn had been nominated by Biden for the FCC, but withdrew her nomination after a protracted and fraught confirmation process.

Last fall, when Kimmel made comments about Charlie Kirk’s killer, FCC commissioner Carr said affiliates could preempt, or drop the show, which Nextstar and Sinclair, the two biggest owners of television stations, did. Even after a public outrage reinstated Kimmel’s show, the two did not bring back Kimmel’s show for days.

“Public outrage is the best tonic,” Sohn said, referring to the outcry that led ABC to bring back Kimmel. “But there are so many outrages.”

‘Control the narrative’

While broadcasters’ licences for free airwaves come with a public service responsibility, the FCC notice said daytime and late-night shows have been partisan.

But others, such as Berkeley’s Davis, say notices like this serve to “control the narrative, not inform the public”.

“The executive branch getting so powerful and increasing concentration of media ownership in corporate hands have created two forms of power that have colluded in ways that undermine media independence,” he told Al Jazeera.

It is a pattern American University’s Susca said she saw in other countries with sliding democratic standards and has written about in her forthcoming book Media Plutocracy, to be published by the University of Massachusetts Press.

“Hungary was the most glaring example where media ownership was concentrated in the hands of wealthy people who were aligned with President Orban,” she said. “This led to media restrictions and has meant that media independence was gone and any accountability on journalism disappeared in 15 years of Orban.”

Stern of the Freedom of Press Foundation said that, while there are comparisons with developments in Russia and Hungary, where media acquisitions have been steered towards favourable owners leading to a slide in media independence, these aren’t the only such cases.

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“There are many precedents. Some of what we are seeing is old, and some new, but the value of these comparisons is limited because Trump is a unique figure in a unique time”.

More conservative analysts have accused the media of having a liberal bias that they have battled to correct. For instance, when Harris appeared in a 90-second Saturday Night Live last year and made jokes such as the US public “wants to end the dramala”, Suhr’s Center for American Rights filed a complaint for equal time. NBC then filed a public file offering equal time to Trump, who made a 90-second speech asking voters to vote for him.

The Center for American Rights did not respond to a request for comment by Al Jazeera.

While these battles are being fought over broadcasters’ right to air, Berkeley’s Davis pointed out that “this is a time for convergence. I watch Kimmel on YouTube,” where viewers could see the show, even when Nextstar and Sinclair did not air it, and the Communication Act rules do not apply.

Viewers, of all political views, are increasingly turning to social media for their news, opinions and humour, data shows.

“I like more speech, not less. Limiting it could be a concerning impact of this,” Sohn said.