By The Guardian
NBC on Sunday filed notice that the broadcast network had provided Donald Trump equal time to Kamala Harris’s surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live, by providing him a chance to directly address voters following a Nascar race.
A US government communications regulator had claimed that Harris’s surprise appearance on the comedy program violated “equal time” rules that govern political programming. Brendan Carr, a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), had called Harris’s appearance “a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule”.
Carr made the claim in response to an Associated Press alert to Harris being on the show that night.
“The purpose of the rule is to avoid exactly this type of biased and partisan conduct – a licensed broadcaster using the public airwaves to exert its influence for one candidate on the eve of an election. Unless the broadcaster offered Equal Time to other qualifying campaigns,” said Carr, who was nominated by both Trump and Biden and confirmed unanimously by the Senate three times.
