Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said in a radio interview that his agency was reviewing complaints about a controversial joke told by Stephen Colbert, the CBS late-night host, to determine if further action was warranted. Speaking on Thursday to Talk Radio 1210 WPHT in Philadelphia, Mr. Pai said, “I have had a chance to see the clip now and so, as we get complaints, and we’ve gotten a number of them, we are going to take the facts that we find and we are going to apply the law as it’s been set out by the Supreme Court and other courts and we’ll take the appropriate action.”Mr. Colbert, the host of “The Late Show” on CBS, has come under fire for a joke he told Monday night in his opening monologue, in which he used coarse language to suggest a sexual relationship between President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. (The CBS broadcast blurred Mr. Colbert’s mouth and bleeped his audio for a portion of the joke.) The joke was criticized for being homophobic and struck some conservative viewers as being beyond the pale; the hashtag #FireColbert trended on Twitter for several hours after it was broadcast.

Source: New York Times May 05, 2017 22:32 UTC