{"articles":[{"reaction_config":[{"text":"Yes","color":"#624960","stance":"yes"},{"text":"Maybe","color":"#edb723","stance":"maybe"},{"text":"No","color":"#4ac6ec","stance":"no"}],"id":23766,"title":"Trump Calls for FCC ‘Collusion’ Investigation into Saturday Night Live – Do You Support a Probe?","html_content":"\n

by Causes | 3.18.19

What’s the story?

President Donald Trump has repeated his criticisms of Saturday Night Live, this time calling on the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the sketch comedy series for “collusion.”
In a duo of early-morning tweets on Sunday, Trump took aim at a rerun of the show that had aired the evening before:

What is Trump referencing?

In the past, Trump has also found shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and The Late Show so politicized that he evoked the \"equal-time\" rule.
The FCC regulation requires that if a TV station gives a certain amount of airtime to one candidate (say, an interview), it also has to offer the same opportunity to “other such candidates for that office.”
Trump may also be referring to the FCC’s “fairness doctrine” that required networks to give balanced coverage to matters of public controversy. But the FCC eliminated that policy in 1987, saying it likely violated the First Amendment.

What’s the likely outcome?

When Trump made similar claims mid-December, DePauw University professor and media critic Jeffrey McCall told Fox News that SNL is “clearly designed as much as a political commentary show as it is a comedy, entertainment show.”
“Surely, ‘SNL' has had fun with content about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but the tone has not been nearly as charged as with the attacks on Trump,” McCall said.

“SNL is exercising its comedic and political free speech license to take on political personalities and issues as it sees fit, so Trump and his supporters should not expect any sort of balance. If anything, expect SNL to give Trump a very rough time heading into the 2020 election season.”

The courts likely won’t hear the president’s case against SNL as parody has historically been protected on free speech grounds. “A prime example of courts protecting the media’s right to parody a celebrity came in 1988 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of pornographer Larry Flynt after Rev. Jerry Falwell sued over a satirical interview in Hustler magazine that joked that Falwell’s first sexual encounter was with his own mother,” the New York Daily News explained.

What do you think?

Should SNL’s belittling of Trump be \"looked into\" by the FCC or FEC? Take action and tell your reps, then share your thoughts below.

—Josh Herman

(Photo Credit: AP / Getty Images / Screen Capture)

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