Always A Newsman First

FCC Rules That Anderson Cooper’s Syndicated Talker Is a News Program

By Alex Weprin on December 4, 2011 -- 2:57 PM

The FCC has ruled that CNN anchor Anderson Cooper‘s daytime talk show, which is more likely to feature an interview “Real Housewives” than real politicians, is in fact a news program, and is thus exempt from FCC regulations that require equal time to be given to all political candidates.

In other words, Cooper can now have on political candidates (or their wives, families, whomever) and does not have to worry about providing equal space to all the other candidates in the race.

As The Hollywood Reporter notes, the decision wasn’t exactly a surprise:

As the FCC’s ruling points out, the TV show Entertainment Tonight has also qualified as a bona fide newscast after the agency decided its “role is not to decide, by some qualitative analysis, whether one kind of news story is more bona fide than another.”