Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman, both D-Pa., are urging the FCC to “act swiftly to conclude its review” of Fox station WTXF Philadelphia's license renewal application. The Media and Democracy Project has petitioned the FCC since July against renewing WTXF’s license based on disclosures from the Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox defamation lawsuit and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol (see 2307060065). Other federal and Pennsylvania Democratic lawmakers have spoken in favor of WTXF (see 2402220076). “It is critical” that the FCC administer the renewal review process “in a fair and neutral manner, as it has been for decades,” Casey and Fetterman said in a Friday letter to the FCC posted Monday. WTXF “has provided a platform that uplifts Philadelphia's diverse voices and supports local journalism, and we hope that its delivery of local news and local programming to the community is not disrupted.” The record in the renewal proceeding “is replete with comments from Philadelphia residents, organizations, and elected officials from a range of backgrounds attesting to the station's commitment to upholding the core values of local broadcasting and to serving Philadelphia’s residents,” the senators said: “We hope that you take these comments as a testament to the importance this station has in the community.”
The FCC should listen to Philadelphians rather than the “politically motivated” out-of-state Media and Democracy Project on the license renewal of Fox’s WTXF Philadelphia (see 2401310059), said Pennsylvania State Sen. Anthony Williams (D) in a letter to the FCC posted in docket 23-293 Thursday. “Here in the city, and the boroughs and suburbs that my colleagues represent, Fox 29 serves as a resource for all local leaders to relay information to constituents and audiences that otherwise would be more difficult to reach,” said Williams. The station is “a critical part of not just the Philadelphia media ecosystem, but a useful tool for state-level representatives to communicate policy to constituents," said Williams.
FCC action against Fox station WTXF Philadelphia's license would create a “perilous regulatory environment” and expose broadcasters to constant threats against their licenses, Fox said in a letter to the FCC Tuesday. The letter responded to recent filings from former Fox and Disney executive Preston Padden seeking to add to the FCC record filings from an ongoing defamation case against Fox by the Smartmatic voting machine company (see 2401250072). Padden is part of the Media and Democracy Project effort against WTXF’s license renewal. The Smartmatic case and a settlement Fox reached with Dominion voting machine company don’t involve allegations of conduct that violates the FCC’s character policy and neither case includes a final adjudication against Fox, the Fox letter said. The FCC “can and should deny MAD’s petition on the basis that no claim has been pled that is recognized by the Commission’s own precedent or the Communications Act.” A broadcast license renewal proceeding “is not a venue for adjudicating cable network content,” said Fox. The FCC character policy includes provisions where the agency can consider a licensee's egregious misconduct outside the broadcasting context, Padden wrote in an email. Fox countered that if broadcast licenses can be threatened “based solely on unadjudicated allegations made by a third party in an unrelated civil proceeding,” the FCC process could easily be abused “in attempts to silence disfavored speakers across the political spectrum.” Fox added: “Fortunately, MAD’s law is not the law of the Commission or Congress.” In additional comments filed Wednesday, Padden said: "Leaving aside the indisputable fact that Fox News Channel reports and stories ARE broadcast by the Fox Owned Television Stations including WTXF, I respectfully submit that the Murdochs and Fox are simply flat wrong in arguing that their actions in businesses other than the television stations are not relevant to evaluation of their Character for broadcast licensing purposes."
Longtime First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams is supporting the campaign against a license renewal for Fox station WTXF Philadelphia (see 2310100068). Abrams is known for defending newspapers and broadcasters against the government in high-profile cases such as the New York Times' litigation over the Pentagon Papers. “Broadcasters do have considerable First Amendment rights -- a good deal of my career has been devoted to seeking to establish just that -- but ... repeated distortion of information that is broadcast about a forthcoming election is precisely what a broadcaster may not do and that the Commission may consider in determining whether license renewal is appropriate,” said Abrams in informal comments filed with the FCC. Former FCC Chairman Alfred Sikes and former Weekly Standard editor William Kristol are also part of the campaign, which the Media and Democracy Project and former Fox and Disney executive Preston Padden are spearheading. Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, denounced the effort, and the FCC has received letters supporting WTXF from public officials and organizations, including former Undersecretary of the Army Patrick Murphy, the African-American Chamber of Commerce for Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, and the Democratic chairwoman of the city’s delegation to the state House. Padden Thursday also filed comments calling on the agency to include in its record a recent New York State Supreme Court ruling denying Fox’s motion to dismiss a defamation claim from voting machine company Smartmatic. “The Media and Democracy Project petition to deny the license renewal of WTXF-TV is frivolous, completely without merit and asks the FCC to upend the First Amendment and long-standing FCC precedent,” said Fox. “WTXF-TV / FOX 29 News Philadelphia is one of the finest local news stations in the country, broadcasting over 60 hours of local news and locally produced programming every week, and has tremendous broad political and community support.”
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.