ABC states in the opening paragraphs of its filing with the FCC that the Commission’s targeting of “The View” over its guest bookings is not consistent and ultimately threatens talk radio as well. The petition states: “These Reply Comments arise from an unusual posture. ABC did not come to the Federal Communications Commission asking for anything. The Commission compelled ABC to file the Petition for Declaratory Ruling at issue here, directing the network to explain why the government. should not dictate which political candidates may appear on The View—even though the Commission itself resolved that very question in ABC’s favor more than two decades ago, ruling in 2002 that The View is a bona fide news program not subject to the equal opportunities requirement.

“Members of the public then submitted tens of thousands of comments in the proceeding, the overwhelming majority urging the Commission to respect the broadcaster’s editorial independence. These Reply Comments respond to that record. The commenters are right to be concerned. The First Amendment does not permit the government to sit in an editor’s chair. Yet that is the seat the Commission now proposes to take—deciding which broadcast programs qualify as legitimate news and, for those it finds wanting, compelling them to surrender their airtime to guests they never chose to feature.

“Today, the program in the Commission’s sights is The View. The principle in the balance is far larger: whether a federal regulator may override a broadcaster’s editorial judgment about whom to interview—a judgment the Constitution commits to broadcasters and their audiences, not to the state. Nothing about The View that the law cares about has changed since the Commission last answered that question more than two decades ago. The program remains regularly scheduled, remains under ABC’s control, and remains driven by the same lodestar—newsworthiness—that has long led it to interview the day’s most consequential figures, from Presidents and Senators to Supreme Court Justices. What has changed is not the program but the political climate around it.

“The Commission has trained its attention on daytime and late-night television—programs perceived as unfriendly to the current administration—while leaving untouched the vast landscape of talk radio, where candidates routinely appear without their opponents. A rule pressed against one set of speakers and quietly suspended for another, along lines that track the administration’s political preferences, is not evenhanded regulation. The record here reflects a widespread and well-founded concern that it is not.”