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in General Factchecking by Newbie (340 points)
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Former Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance in Saturday Night Live's cold open sketch last week joined by well-known comedian Maya Rudolph who impersonates her. After her cameo, a Federal Communications Commission stated that Harris' appearance violates the "equal time rule" which asserts that all participating electoral candidates being broadcasted by a station must be given the same amount of time on the same terms. Saturday Night Live's executive producer Lorne Michaels had even stated prior that Harris or Trump were not going to have any cameos in the show with quote, "You can’t have the main candidates without having all the candidates, and there are lots of minor candidates that are only on the ballot in, like, three states, and that becomes really complicated."

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by Newbie (360 points)

While I believe most of this factcheck is correct, I think some parts of it may be misleading. According to PBS, the equal opportunity law "provides that when a broadcast station allows any “legally qualified candidate"—whether for federal, state, or local office—to “use” its facilities, it must provide "equal opportunities" to all other legally qualified candidates for the same office." When solely looking at this definition, the law appears to be violated under the circumstances. However, it becomes more nuanced when you look deeper into it. PBS also added that in 2015, when Trump hosted SNL, he appeared for 12 minutes. Therefore, NBC gave four rival Republican candidates...free, 12-minute prime-time slots on NBC-affiliated stations in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina during a subsequent weekend.  The rival candidates were not, however, invited to host Saturday Night Live." Comparing both instances, we can see that rivals do in fact need to be provided equal airtime by broadcasters, but not necessarily in the same format. Due to this, this claim could be misleading, as there is no listed evidence that Trump wasn't given the same amount of airtime on a different occasion on NBC. However, if you could find evidence that he didn't get that, then your claim may very well be accurate. It is simply hard to know when we don't have access to a list that keeps track of how many minutes each candidate was aired across broadcast channels. I will add that it is strange that the executive producer would claim that neither candidate would be featured, just to go on to do the exact opposite. Digging up more about why she actually did get airtime could also prove your original claim. 

PBS Article: https://www.pbs.org/standards/media-law-101/candidate-appearances/

by Novice (700 points)
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I admire your answer and how you dug deep to find it. I agree with your statement that the claim is slightly misleading. There is a lack of information, making it hard to find out if it is true or not.
by Innovator (51.5k points)
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So you rate the claim as true or misleading?

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