This summer, the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Media Bureau took the unusual step of seeking public comment on whether ABC’s The View qualifies as a bona fide news interview program and is therefore exempt from the federal equal opportunities rule — despite the program having received that exemption more than two decades ago.
While the proceeding centers on a single television program, its implications reach far beyond The View. The FCC’s actions have sparked renewed debate over the role of government in evaluating editorial decisions, the distinction between news, commentary, and entertainment programming, and the constitutional limits on government involvement in the press.
In this episode, host Jamal Magby is joined by Kate Ruane, Director of CDT’s Free Expression Project, and Ashkhen Kazaryan, Senior Legal Fellow at the Future of Free Speech, to unpack the legal, constitutional, and policy questions at the heart of the proceeding. Together, they explore the history of the equal opportunities rule, why news interview exemptions exist, and what this case could mean for broadcasters, journalists, and the public’s access to independent news and information.
Not All Guardrails Are Created Equal: Comparing Content Safety and Copyright Filtering
As courts and policymakers work through questions about chatbot liability, they should be wary of analogies that flatten meaningful technical differences. Copyright filtering and safety intervention share real challenges around ambiguity and evasion, but they diverge in what each control must assess, how each manifests over the course of a conversation, and how much can be verified from the outside.
Op-Ed: France’s Constitutional Council Ruling Tests the Limits of Social Media Bans
Read our analysis the legal and policy significance of the Constitutional Council’s decision on ongoing social media age restriction and age assurance debates ahead of the most-anticipated EU-wide approach on child online safety due by December 2026.
The brief explains that Section 230’s liability protections are essential to enable free expression online and they extend to the use of automated systems to engage to rank and order content as part of traditional publishing activities.
