Jim Antle, the magazine’s executive editor, brings to life the pages of the Washington Examiner magazine in the show Inside Scoop. Each episode features exclusive insight from the article authors and expert analysis.
Antle discusses Jay Caruso’s article on the latest Colbert controversy and how it highlights dated broadcast regulations.
“In many cases, what they’re relying on are rules about equal time and other broadcasting regulations that really predate the Trump administration by many decades,” Antle said. “They go back to when there were just a few television networks, and they really tried to regulate how fair and balanced the media would be.”
Stephen Colbert had an interview he couldn’t air on his late-night show but it did eventually show up on YouTube. Colbert claims he is being censored by the Trump administration. Antle says while there are many defenders of Colbert who think interviewing one but not the other candidate in a competitive Texas Democratic primary for Senate would certainly count for the equal time rule, the Trump FCC, however, thinks this was misplaced anger.
“This was Democrat on Democrat violence,” said Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr. “CBS was very clear that Colbert could run the interview that he wanted with that political candidate. They just said you may have to comply with equal time, which would have meant potentially giving air time to Jasmine Crockett.”
Antle wonders if any of these rules really apply to the competitive media environment that exists today? Antle thinks the interview got more attention than it probably would have if it had just aired on normal TV.
“After all, this interview did end up showing,” Antle said. “Colbert and Kimmel get a lot of attention by claiming they’re being censored by the Trump administration.”
Next in the show, Antle sits down with Isaac Schorr, editor at Mediaite, to discuss the cover article he wrote on how he believes America is off the rails because this political class spikes fear and division.
Schorr explains the growing concern about the increasing weight of American politics, with many people feeling that each election now carries enormous, sometimes even existential, consequences.
“You can say we have polarization, but we also have a bipartisan consensus that anything goes,” Schorr said. “You can’t deny that both sides have gone this direction.”
Schorr says this dynamic shapes today’s politics, noting the most striking is the gap between how voters perceive their leaders and the reality of how far those leaders are now willing to go.
“Biden ran as a moderate, but governed much further to the left,” Schorr said. “His Department of Justice did prosecute the man he defeated in the prior election.”
Our in-depth report this week, by Daniel Ross Goodman, covers the scandal of the Epstein Royal Reckoning.
The second son of Queen Elizabeth II, Andrew, had close ties with Jeffrey Epstein for decades.
“The Prince Andrew case has unfolded as the most severe crisis for the monarchy since the Duke of Windsor revelations,” Goodman said. “Layered on top is the downfall of Peter Mandelson, the Labour Party politician and former U.K. ambassador to the U.S, whose own Epstein connections led to his arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office.”
Tune in each week at washingtonexaminer.com and across all our social media platforms to go behind the headlines in the Washington Examiner’s magazine show, Inside Scoop.