FCC chair mocks 'The View' host Sunny Hostin for blatant partisanship as she pleads for Dems to win Senate

Sunny Hostin telling viewers to go vote Democrats into the Senate is not exactly a shocking turn of events. She's said versions of this a hundred times. What's funny is watching ABC's lawyers, in whatever filing or statement got them here, insist with a straight face that "The View" is a bona fide news program deserving the same treatment as a nightly newscast. Brendan Carr didn't need to do much work to make that argument look silly. He just had to point at the tape.

This isn't really about whether Hostin should have an opinion. She's entitled to one, and so is everyone else at that table. The issue is the label. Calling a daytime talk show where hosts openly campaign for a party "news" is a legal and regulatory convenience, not a description of what's actually happening on screen. Networks want it both ways: the credibility of news coverage without the responsibilities that come with it, and the freedom of opinion programming without ever admitting that's what it is.

Carr mocking the show for its "blatant partisanship" isn't some heavy-handed government overreach here, it's just somebody in a position to ask the obvious question doing exactly that. If ABC wants to argue "The View" belongs in the same category as its news division, they should be ready to defend that claim on the merits, not just assert it and hope nobody checks the transcript.

At some point honesty about what a show actually is would go a lot further than dressing up a partisan pep rally in a press badge.