MAD Tries to Block License Renewal of Fox Earth Station
The Media and Democracy Project (MAD) petitioned the FCC to deny the renewal of a Fox-owned earth station as a continuation of its prior efforts against the license of WTXF Philadelphia.
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The WTXF petition argued that Fox doesn’t have the character to hold an FCC license after a judge ruled, in the course of a lawsuit filed by voting machine company Dominion, that Fox News lied about the 2020 presidential election being stolen. That petition to deny was rejected by the Media Bureau late last year, in part because the misrepresentations raised by MAD took place on the Fox News Channel and weren’t aired on WTXF.
The latest petition, filed Nov. 18, targets Fox’s earth station E100098, which MAD said was used as a satellite uplink to broadcast the Fox News content targeted in the court ruling. In a Nov. 28 response filing, Fox said MAD’s petition is “a frivolous and repetitive effort to relitigate the Media Bureau’s denial of a nearly identical pleading MAD filed against a television station.” The Space Bureau shouldn’t tolerate the group's “continued abuse of Commission processes” and “should reject MAD’s attempt to convert a routine earth station renewal application into regulation of cable news and other non-broadcast content,” Fox said. “After having held up [WTXF’s] license renewal application for over 600 days, MAD is engaged in forum shopping for another airing of its baseless allegations.”
In a reply filed Friday, MAD disagreed. The earth station matter doesn’t represent a relitigation because the content was transmitted with the satellite uplink and the WTXF matter hasn’t been finalized, it said, because the group has appealed the Media Bureau’s decision. Fox News “does not deny that it used its earth station to broadcast the very distortions and misrepresentations which were the subject of the Dominion litigation,” the reply filing said. “Thus, this petition is significantly different [from] the petition MAD previously filed, and it places the question of [Fox’s] character qualifications squarely before the Space Bureau.”