ABC on Monday urged federal regulators to stick with a decision their predecessors made two decades ago that called “The View,” the network’s popular talk show, a news program.
The Federal Communications Commission has been investigating whether the show violated rules that require broadcasters to give equal time to political candidates from both parties. At the center of the debate is whether “The View” qualifies as a “bona fide news program,” which would exempt it from those rules.
In a filing to the agency on Monday, the network said that matter was already settled, citing a 2002 decision from the F.C.C. qualifying it for the exemption.
“Nothing about ‘The View’ that the law cares about has changed since the commission last answered that question more than two decades ago,” the network said in its petition. “The program remains regularly scheduled, remains under ABC’s control, and remains driven by the same lodestar — newsworthiness — that has long led it to interview the day’s most consequential figures.”
A spokeswoman for the F.C.C. said in a statement that ABC should focus on “complying with” federal obligations for broadcasters, “rather than misleading the public about them.”
“The View” has interviewed several prominent politicians since Brendan Carr, the head of the F.C.C., announced his investigation in February, including Vice President JD Vance, the former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey.
The F.C.C.’s focus on “The View” plays on longstanding grudges held by the president against the show and some of its hosts, and thrusts a talk show started by the ABC journalist Barbara Walters as a breezy kaffeeklatsch into a molten national debate over free-speech rights and the Trump administration’s war against traditional media. Mr. Carr’s investigation has led to tens of thousands of comments from the public on the F.C.C. website.
The current administration has waged a multifront war against the media, threatening litigation, revoking press credentials and issuing bare-knuckled public remarks from the White House briefing room. The F.C.C. is also undergoing a wider review of whether ABC should be allowed to continue to own some of the country’s most important local television stations.
At issue for “The View” are longstanding rules from the early era of electronic broadcasting that require television and radio stations — licensed by the F.C.C. — to grant equal time to candidates for the same office.
News programming was exempted from those rules, and over the years talk shows, including “The View,” came to fall under the same carve out.
Mr. Carr announced earlier this year that he was going to be far more restrictive in granting such exemptions, and is now effectively trying to pull back the 2002 determination about “The View.” The agency in March compelled ABC to file for a new determination, and the network conveyed that its latest filing had been made under duress.
In its filing, ABC said it believed that the matter should go before the full commission for a vote, rather than remain with the F.C.C.’s media bureau, though Mr. Carr exerts a great deal of control over the entire agency.
The ABC filing is co-signed by Paul D. Clement, one of the nation’s leading conservative Supreme Court litigators, indicating ABC would challenge a loss of its exception.
One of the leading conservative groups siding against ABC, the Center for American Rights, has argued that “The View” should not count as a bona fide news program because its hosts are not professional journalists.
It also argued in a June submission that the program had a “deep and consistent lack of balance” that suggested the airtime was being used to forward a political agenda, “rather than as an exercise in good-faith newscasting.”
ABC News has denied as much but, in its filing, it also said it was not government’s role to decide what did and didn’t constitute political bias.
