FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez wants to focus on empowering and engaging with underserved consumers and combating media disinformation, she said Tuesday during the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s inaugural Celebrating Latina Excellence event. A news release from her office called it “her first major speech.” Gomez was sworn in Sept. 25. In a news conference after her remarks Tuesday, Gomez said that her most immediate policy goals for the FCC are implementing continued funding for the affordable connectivity program and spectrum auctions authorization, both of which would require congressional action before the agency could act. “I am a firm believer in the power of competition to drive innovation that improves services and lowers prices for consumers,” Gomez said. “But competition only works when the market works”
Filings by the Media and Democracy Project petitioning against the renewal of the license of WTXF Philadelphia have become repetitious and the FCC should conclude the proceeding, said Fox in an ex parte letter Monday posted in docket 23-293. “The FCC has been generous in allowing MAD to continue making filings well after the close of the formal pleading cycle,” said Fox. “Now that these filings have become entirely repetitious, both the Commission and the viewing public would be well-served by conclusion of this proceeding.” Recent MAD requests for the FCC to include filings and evidence related to lawsuits against the Fox network by shareholders and voting machine companies run counter to FCC rules, Fox said. The FCC’s character policy for licensees does not override language in the Communications Act limiting the agency’s review of a station’s license renewal to consideration of conduct by that station, Fox said. Fox and retiring Chairman Rupert Murdoch's family “are attempting to deny the FCC readily available information essential to the FCC making a ‘character qualification’ determination -- in effect, trying to pull the wool over the Commission's eyes,” MAD said in an email. “My takeaway from this filing is that the Murdochs and Fox really do not want the FCC and MAD to see the documents they produced in the Shareholder, Dominion and Smartmatic court cases -- obviously relevant documents, already on digital disks and easily produced,” said MAD supporter Preston Padden, a former Fox and Disney executive.
The FCC should require Fox to produce documents about ad sales at WTXF-TV Philadelphia and evidence connected with lawsuits against Fox, said the Media and Democracy Project in an ex parte meeting with Media Bureau Chief Holly Saurer and other Media Bureau staff. Former FCC Chair Alfred Sikes, former Weekly Standard editor William Kristol and I Street Advocates attorney David Goodfriend attended the meeting in support of MAD, according to the filing posted Friday in docket 23-293. Goodfriend told us he was there as a volunteer and doesn’t legally represent MAD or any of the parties in the matter. The “public interest imperative” of WTXF’s license renewal requires review of “all the evidence from the Dominion and Smartmatic litigations, all documents reviewed in the four stockholder derivative lawsuits, and all documents and written communications from political advertisers requesting to purchase advertising” on WTXF, said the ex parte filing. “Granting the motion for production of documents is necessary to allow the FCC to make an informed decision on whether to set the WTXF renewal application for hearing,” the filing said. MAD's request for documents from lawsuits and proceedings that don't involve WTXF don't have "any support in the law or rules," said Fox in a filing Monday. "MAD seeks a wide-ranging public fishing expedition untethered from criteria relevant to a license renewal proceeding," Fox said. "Unfortunately for MAD, its preferred law is not that of the Commission’s, and a grant of MAD’s 'Motion' would prejudice not only Fox 29 Philadelphia, but also destabilize the integrity of the Commission’s broadcast license renewal process more broadly." The FCC should follow its own long-standing procedures, Fox said. The FCC is considered unlikely to grant the MAD petition.
The FCC must dismiss a petition to deny the license renewal of Fox-owned WTXF-Philadelphia, said NAB and the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters in comments posted Thursday in docket 23-293 (see 2310100068). The petition, which pointed to false information aired by the Fox News cable channel about the 2020 election, “risks setting a factually, legally, and constitutionally suspect precedent to the potential future detriment of thousands of stations that serve their communities,” they said. An FCC renewal proceeding should be concerned with the conduct of the local station, but the petition from the Media and Democracy Project ignores WTXF, focusing on content that aired on Fox News and Dominion's defamation lawsuit over that cable programming, said the trade groups. “It appears that Petitioners targeted WTXF because it was the only pending license renewal application associated with Fox Television Stations, LLC, and not due to material actually aired by the station itself,” the filing said. The FCC’s news distortion policy doesn’t apply to any content outside the broadcast medium, and the defamation settlement with Dominion doesn’t meet the “heavy burden” required of petitions to deny, the broadcast groups said. The FCC should reject MAD’s “invitation to reinterpret the FCC’s character policies -- which apply to all broadcast licensees -- in the context of a single station’s license renewal proceeding,” said NAB and PAB. If the FCC seeks to reexamine its policies on charter qualifications it “should conduct a general notice and comment proceeding focused on those policies,” the groups said. MAD didn’t comment.
The FCC should take filings from shareholder lawsuits and other court cases against Fox into account in the hearing proceeding on WTXF-TV Philadelphia (see Ref:2307060065]) and require they be entered as evidence, said two filings from the Media and Democracy Project (MAD) and its supporters posted Tuesday in docket 23-293. Documents from four shareholder lawsuits filed against Fox in the Delaware Court of Chancery and sealed filings from the cases brought by voting machine companies Smartmatic and Dominion “can shed important light on Fox’s behavior immediately after the 2020 presidential election,” said a motion for production of documents from MAD. “By requiring Fox to produce these documents and allowing MAD to review them and supplement its petition, the Commission will have a more complete record,” the filing said. Former FCC Commissioner Ervin Duggan and Weekly Standard founder William Kristol -- both backers of MAD’s petition to deny -- submitted the complaints from the shareholder lawsuits as evidence, in a separate letter. The lawsuits argue shareholders were damaged by Fox’s amplification of the false stories about the 2020 election because those actions led to a $787 million settlement with Dominion. The complaints “reflect that FOX shareholders are as troubled as we are by the same core issue that should trouble the Commission, and that should lead the Commission to designate a hearing,” said the letter from Kristol and Duggan. Conduct that would compel FCC action if it came from a broadcaster shouldn’t be ignored just because it was undertaken by a “sister cable channel” owned by the same entity, “just as an adulterer’s dalliances cannot be disregarded because they occurred at the paramour’s residence rather than in the marital bed,” said Kristol and Duggan. Fox responded to the MAD filings by citing a letter of support for WTXF from former Undersecretary of the Army Patrick Murphy, also a former Democratic member of Congress. "I have known Fox 29 leadership since my first run for US Congress in 2005 and they have always been fair, balanced, and genuinely give a platform to inspire others to make a positive difference locally and nationally," said the letter. "Fox 29 Philadelphia has done great work in our community, providing balanced coverage of public policy issues, including telling stories of military veterans, who are 42% people of color in my generation of Post 9/11 veterans."
President Joe Biden on Thursday denounced Republican plans to eliminate protections for civil servants and limit the power of independent agencies like the FCC, as well as Donald Trump's threat that Comcast's "Treason" will be "thoroughly scrutinized" if he's re-elected president. “What do they intend to do once they erode the constitutional order of checks and balances and separation of powers? Limit the independence of federal agencies and put them under the thumb of a president?” Biden said in Tempe, Arizona, at the dedication ceremony of a library named in memory of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Biden condemned former President Donald Trump’s Schedule F order, which would have made it easier to fire staffers while increasing the number of political appointees in civil service jobs. “These civil servants had to pledge loyalty to the President, not the Constitution. [Trump's order] did not require that they had any protections, and the President would be able to wholesale fire them if he wanted,” Biden said. Biden rescinded Schedule F before it took effect, and the Office of Personnel Management is considering a draft rule that would protect federal worker due process rights against future versions of Schedule F. Trump has pledged to bring independent agencies such as the FCC under direct presidential authority if reelected (see 2304280002). Biden also highlighted a recent social media post by Trump saying Comcast should be investigated for “Country Threatening Treason.” “When I WIN the Presidency of the United States, they and others of the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage,” Trump posted Sept. 24. “Why should NBC, or any other of the corrupt & dishonest media companies, be entitled to use the very valuable Airwaves of the USA, FREE?” Accusing a major news network of treason because of unfavorable coverage shows that “the MAGA movement,” which Biden called “the controlling element of the House Republican Party,” hasn’t given up, Biden said. “I don’t know what the hell I’d say about Fox if that becomes the rule,” Biden said. “I’m joking, but think about it.” As president, Trump repeatedly invoked the FCC and tagged then-Chairman Ajit Pai in tweets against media companies, and several times said NBC should lose its “license” (see 1809040051). Pai said then the FCC doesn’t have authority to revoke the license of a broadcast station over its content. The Media and Democracy Project’s petition asking the FCC to revoke the license of WTXF-TV Philadelphia (see 2307060065) shouldn’t be compared to Trump’s posts, said MAP supporter Preston Padden. “Trump’s partisan rant against MSNBC easily is distinguishable from the bi-partisan factual case against Fox’s knowing/repeated presentation of false news,” Padden emailed.
Fox and News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch is stepping down from the boards of both companies, said a Fox news release Thursday. After the mid-November shareholder meetings for both companies, his son Lachlan Murdoch will move from co-chairman of News Corp. to sole chairman and continue as executive chairman and CEO of Fox. Murdoch will become chairman emeritus of both companies. Murdoch was CEO of 21st Century Fox from its beginning as News Corporation in 1979 until 2015, and then chairman until it combined with Disney in 2019, when Fox was launched as a stand-alone company. “I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change,” Murdoch reportedly told employees in a memo about the move. Rupert Murdoch’s direct oversight of Fox, its stations and its programming is a key point in the Media and Democracy Project’s petition to block the license renewal of Fox-owned station WTXF-TV Philadelphia (see 2307060065). “This announcement has zero impact on the FCC filings regarding the Fox broadcast licenses” given “that the Trust he controls has a controlling stock interest in Fox, the fact that his Son remains Chair and CEO, and the fact that the same cadre of executives who knowingly and repeatedly presented false news remains,” Fox opponent Preston Padden emailed.
Fox Television Stations didn’t properly maintain WTXF-TV Philadelphia’s online public file and then misrepresented whether it had done so, said the Media and Democracy Project in a letter to the FCC Monday. MAD conceded in the letter that online public file violations aren’t typically a basis for license renewals to be designated for hearing but said they are relevant when considered alongside the other allegations raised against parent company Fox. “Material misrepresentations however minor add to the disqualifying grounds already set forth,” said the letter. MAD argued that political advertising contracts were uploaded to the file late -- in some case after the ads had aired -- and said FTS misrepresented those contracts as inquiries to bolster its contention the filings weren’t late. MAD also took aim at FTS arguments that technical difficulties with the online public file affected filing times. The FCC and numerous attorneys have experienced issues with the agency’s filing systems throughout 2023 (see 2306200063), but FTS didn’t adequately document such a problem, MAD said. “If FTS truly was unable to timely file political contracts due to technical difficulties, it should have included the details in its renewal application,” MAD said. “FTS did none of this and is now offering post hoc excuses to justify its repeated failure.” Fox didn’t comment.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, mentioned the license renewal proceeding for Fox Television Stations-owned WTXF-TV Philadelphia in a floor speech before the confirmation vote for FCC nominee Anna Gomez Thursday. The FCC “is now entertaining requests by radical left-wing groups to revoke a broadcast station’s license for alleged ‘misinformation’ and turning a routine FCC license renewal proceeding into a truth commission,” said Cruz. The petition to deny 's supporters are “bipartisan including Bill Kristol, former editor of Murdoch’s conservative Weekly Standard magazine, Al Sikes, former Republican Chairman of the FCC and me -- longtime Republican enabler of Fox!,” said former Fox executive and longtime lobbyist Preston Padden in an email. “No one except Senator Cruz is talking about a ‘truth Commission’.” "The Senator's characterization of this effort couldn't be further from the truth," said petitioner the Media and Democracy Project (MAD) in an emailed statement. "The issue here concerns a massive media corporation that, with management's full knowledge and approval, is documented to have lied to millions of Americans." None of the allegations made by MAD against owner Fox Television Stations and its parent company, Fox, should lead to the station’s license being designated for hearing, said Fox in an ex parte meeting Tuesday with FCC Media Bureau Chief Holly Saurer, said an ex parte filing Thursday in docket 23-293. The Communications Act and FCC rules “compel dismissal of MAD’s petition and related filings, and grant of renewal of Fox 29 Philadelphia’s license,” said the filing. FCC rules list a narrow range of categories of non-FCC related conduct that are relevant to considerations of a licensee's character, Fox said. Those include criminal convictions, mass-media antitrust violations, and crimes involving false statements to other government entities. The rules allow for consideration of “non-adjudicated misconduct” but require it to be “so egregious as to shock the conscience and evoke almost ‘universal’ disapprobation,” Fox said. Fox has the “requisite character qualifications and no allegations have been plead concerning potentially ‘relevant’ conduct," the filing said. The MAD petition should also be rejected because it was filed untimely, seeks to apply FCC broadcast rules to cable news, and would amount to changes in the FCC’s character policy without notice or comment, the filing said.
An effort to push the FCC to designate Fox-owned WTXF-TV Philadelphia's license for hearing is "a longshot" but isn’t “frivolous,” wrote Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld in a blog post Tuesday. The allegations from the Media and Democracy Project “raise real, if novel questions” on the boundaries of the FCC’s character policies and how the conduct of one part of a company reflects on another subsidiary’s fitness to hold a broadcast license, Feld wrote. The agency will eventually “have to actually write up a real and binding decision with real consequences and real precedential value,” Feld wrote. In an interview, he conceded the FCC could take a long time to do so and could even potentially let the matter sit until a new administration takes over. A previous dispute involving the license of Fox-owned station WWOR-TV Secaucus, New Jersey, caused the FCC to take seven years, from 2007 to 2014, to approve renewal.