AP (“To air or not to air? Nation’s TV networks struggle to find the right balance for Trump speech“):

As President Donald Trump threatened sanctions for those who didn’t cover his address live Thursday night, the nation’s broadcast and cable news operations wrestled with the thorniest of questions: To air or not to air?

Networks and their news operations, broadcast and cable alike, spent the hours leading up to Trump’s address debating how to cover it — and struggling to balance delivering the news with handing over their airwaves to potential falsehoods about the 2020 elections.

In the end, a patchwork quilt of coverage was largely united by one common strategy: real-time fact-checking as much as was possible even while the president was still speaking.

The dilemma took place against a backdrop of deep tension between the media and a president working to exert control over it by whatever means he can. Even in his speech itself, Trump excoriated networks that chose not to carry it live, saying that “NBC and ABC fake news” avoided it because they “don’t like the topic.” He also threatened them with consequences, using the presidential pulpit to suggest they should be sanctioned for their editorial decisions.

“They and others in the media are part of a plot,” Trump said, offering no evidence for his assertion. There is also no evidence of fraud in the 2020 elections.

“They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason. They want to keep it going,” he said. “Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses. They use our public multibillion-dollar-in-value airwaves for absolutely no money. They pay nothing. All we want is honesty in our elections and honesty in reporting.”

[…]

The media outlets’ decision-making — seemingly last-minute, for many, with networks divulging their plans minutes beforehand — produced a variety of coverage scenarios for the 24 minutes of Trump’s address.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins anchored her nightly program. “We aren’t taking it live,” she said of the speech, given the president’s “well-documented history” of falsehoods. Panelists were on hand for analysis and fact-checking. “Sadly, we have no choice to be skeptical when this president talks elections,” said the network’s veteran correspondent John King.

Fox News and Fox Broadcasting aired the president’s speech live. But ABC and NBC did not, sticking with regular programming — “Press Your Luck,” in ABC’s case, and an animal show featuring alligators in NBC’s. But they were ready to cut in as they deemed newsworthy, as well as offering special reports afterwards.

Both ABC and NBC, however, provided live coverage on their streaming channels — NBC News NOW and ABC News Live — as well as ABC News Radio. In the still-young era of streaming, that is increasingly a decision that allows network news to play it both ways.

As for CBS, the network did preempt regular programming — a summer rerun of “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage” — to air a special report anchored by Tony Dokoupil. The report joined the live speech a few minutes in, at 9:06, and left it before the end, at 9:23.

MS NOW started airing the speech, then cut away for analysis and commentary after 17 minutes on host Jen Psaki’s show. Psaki used the split screen for a bit, with her speaking on the right and a muted Trump appearing on the left.

By the end, of the top networks, the speech was continuing live only on Fox News.

Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture, said coverage of the 24- minute address made for “a weird evening, where the reporters quote and describe the speech but show little of what they’re quoting.” Thompson said full coverage was the way to go even — and perhaps especially — if the speech was believed to contain falsehoods.

“When the president of the United States makes an announcement that there is going to be a major speech with major information, however cynical we are … I think that is, by definition, important civic news significant to the citizenry,” he said. “It’s the president making the speech, and if the president does what everybody’s worried about him doing, that is a real reason to be covering it, to bear witness on exactly what gets said.”

Reuters (“ABC, NBC, CNN do not air Trump’s election-security speech live on primary channels“) adds:

Networks have broad First Amendment rights to decide what they choose to broadcast, experts say. But historically, broadcasters have carried most such speeches on the grounds that they provide information of public importance.

[…]

CBS preempted its regular programming to air the president’s speech, but before the broadcast, anchor Tony Dokoupil offered an advance rebuttal of what was to be ‌expected. “Honestly, much of ⁠what the president has said on this topic is false,” he said, before adding the reason the network was covering the speech live was because “it will be news, and it is our job to cover the news.”

The network broke off after about 15 minutes to debunk Trump’s claims of election fraud.

As a general rule, broadcast networks, which operate on the public airwaves, have a duty to air content in the public interest. This has typically included presidential addresses to the nation.

For most of my early lifetime, they did so without fail. Indeed, the only exception I could find was CBS and NBC refusing to air a speech from President Gerald Ford in October 1975. While I was reasonably attuned to the news for a nine-year-old, I did not remember the incident in question. According to the NYT account:

Two of the nation’s three major television networks refused to carry a live broadcast of President Ford’s address on tax and spending cuts tonight, saying that if they did they would have to give equal time to other candidates for the Republican Presidential nomination.

[…]

“Since the President is now a declared candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1976, the provisions of Section 315 of the Communications Act are applicable to such an address,” said Richard H. Salant, the president of CBS News.

“These provisions require that any other current candidate for the Republican nomination would be entitled to equal time to that afforded the President,” Mr. Salant said.

He noted that there was now one other announced candidate for the Republican nomination, Jacob Gordon of Worcester, Mass.

“In circumstances of national emergencies, or urgent Presidential announcements,” Mr. Salant said, “CBS News would be prepared to accept the consequences of the equal time provisions and provide live coverage of such Presidential addresses.”

[…]

Both Mr. Salant and Richard. Wald, president of NBC News, who gave a similar reason for his network’s decision, said their networks would carry later news coverage of President Ford’s tax proposals.

“It is, of course, the right of the networks to make such decisions,” the White House said in a statement issued before the 8 P.M. broadcast. “We felt that the President’s message was important to every American and that is why the time was requested.”

“As CBS and NBC know, the F.C.C. [ Federal Communications Commission) exempts from so‐called equal time regulations ‘on‐the‐spot coverage of bona fide news events.’ There is no question, in our view, that tonight’s speech was such an event.

Given that Ford’s opposition was nominal at that point (Ronald Reagan would soon mount a much more serious challenge), the rationale was silly. But note the White House’s reaction: they disagreed with the call, but their starting off position was that of course the networks had a First Amendment right to exercise news judgment.

It’s also the case that, in 1975, there were three major broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS) plus the fledgling PBS. With CNN’s founding in 1980, and the proliferation of viewing options over cable and later satellite television (and, later still, the Internet), network executives had to worry about lost audience share. That would change programming calculations.

I’m old enough to remember when all three networks carried both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions gavel-to-gavel. But the audience voted with their feet (or, remote controls) and switched to another channel offering sports, scripted programming, “reality” shows, or something else they deemed more interesting. So, coverage shrank.

Still, presidential addresses to the nation have largely remained sacrosanct. Thompson is right: almost by definition, the world’s most powerful man talking to the country is newsworthy.

Even so, a variant of the logic applied to the aforementioned Ford speech has been applied: is this speech mostly about public policy, or is it primarily partisan or electioneering?

Quick research turns up four prior instances of major networks declining to grant prime time coverage:

• June 1992: ABC, CBS, and NBC decline to air President George H. W. Bush’s economic speech, considering it a bid to shore up his declining re-election prospects.
• November 2001: ABC was the only broadcast network to air President George W. Bush’s speech to firefighters, police officers, and postal workers, deeming it an effort to rally the people in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack, rather than a substantive policy address. It didn’t help that it would have pre-empted “Friends” and “Survivor 3”.
• November 2014: ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox all declined to air President Barack Obama’s address on immigration reform, deeming it too partisan and not sufficiently urgent to pre-empt regular programming, including “The Big Band Theory” and “Bones” during sweeps month.
• September 2022: ABC, CBS, and NBC declined to air President Joe Biden’s speech arguing that Trump and his movement “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” They deemed it too partisan (shocking, I know) and refused to pre-empt “Press Your Luck” and a rerun of “Young Sheldon.”

(AI tells me they also refused to air an August 1995 speech by President Bill Clinton on teen smoking. I can verify that he gave such a speech, but not whether it was covered live.)

Regardless, last night’s decision seems in keeping with these precedents. There’s little news value in airing yet more accusations of election interference live.

While administration officials criticized each of the above-cited refusals, none did so anywhere near as vociferously as Trump. Moreover, none threatened the networks’ licensure.

From the above Reuters report:

At CBS, the takeover of Paramount by David Ellison, whose billionaire father Larry Ellison is a Trump ally, has roiled the newsroom and prompted the departure of senior staff from the news magazine “60 Minutes”. Some employees have alleged political interference in editorial decisions, which the network has denied.
Ellison is now awaiting FCC ​approval for Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, which could give ​him control of CNN, a network Trump has long ⁠criticized for what he says is unfair coverage. The U.S. Justice Department’s Antitrust Division approved the deal last month.

The speech comes at a sensitive moment for U.S. media.

Walt Disney-owned ABC is facing two pending inquiries from the Federal Communications Commission, including one examining whether its daytime talk show “The View” violated equal-time rules by interviewing a Democratic Senate candidate in Texas.

The FCC could ​move as early as next month to begin the process of withdrawing the licenses for Disney’s eight company-owned ABC stations.

Trump has repeatedly attacked NBC and its parent company, Comcast, which he has dubbed “Concast.” Last month ⁠he stormed out of an interview with NBC political reporter Kristen Welker after calling the network “a one-sided crooked network.”

Comcast last month announced plans to split into two publicly traded companies through a spinoff of NBCUniversal and Sky. Analysts have said the move could make NBCUniversal an attractive takeover target.
FCC Chair Brendan Carr is also investigating Comcast and its NBC unit over its diversity practices, which Carr said were the basis for the decision to speed up the reviews of Disney’s ABC stations.

Perhaps this is why Congress created the FCC and other regulatory agencies as independent bodies not subject to presidential control.