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.
Several Philadelphia-area elected officials -- including Reps. Brendan Boyle (D) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R) -- supported Fox-owned WTXF-TV Philadelphia’s license renewal petition, in letters posted Friday in docket 23-393 (see 2308230053). A Media and Democracy Project (MAD) petition to deny renewal of the station -- also called Fox 29 -- “ignores Fox 29 Philadelphia’s long record of exemplary service to the communities,” Fox said. MAD argued a defamation suit brought against Fox over its 2020 election reporting shows the company isn’t fit to be an FCC licensee. WTXF provides “fact-based journalism and local programming which keeps our constituents safe and informed,” said Boyle and Fitzpatrick in a joint letter included in the filing. “Your news department has been professional, honest, and fair in their reporting,” said a letter from Camden, New Jersey, Mayor Victor Carstarphen (D). Pennsylvania state legislator Anthony Bellmon (D) also wrote in support of the station. “This service should be encouraged, not threatened by baseless license renewal challenges—particularly at a time when a rapidly evolving media marketplace is challenging local media across the nation,” said Fox.
The FCC granted a request from the Media and Democracy (MAD) Project to change the license renewal proceeding (see 2308220083) for Fox’s WTXF-TV Philadelphia from restricted to permit-but-disclose, said a public notice Wednesday. In restricted proceedings, ex parte presentations are generally prohibited, but they're allowed in permit-but-disclose if they're filed in the record. Fox opposed MAD’s request (see 2307180071. “We have concluded that classifying this proceeding as permit-but-disclose would, in this case, permit broader public participation and thereby serve the public interest,” said the PN. The WTXF- TV proceeding was assigned docket 23-293. “This wonderful decision will allow the broad bipartisan group of petitioners to meet with commissioners and staff,” said Preston Padden, a former Fox executive who supports the MAD petition. Emailed a Fox Television Stations spokesperson: “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."
The FCC has the authority to designate Fox-owned WTXF-TV Philadelphia for hearing over the false reporting on the 2020 election by its parent company, said the Media and Democracy Project Tuesday in a filing in support of its petition to deny the station’s license renewal. “Designating a hearing on this basis would not be regulation of cable content any more than revoking a convicted felon’s broadcast license would be an intrusion into law enforcement and the judicial system,” said MAD.
The FCC should promptly dismiss the Media and Democracy Project’s petition to deny WTXF-TV Philadelphia’s license renewal, said Fox Television Stations in an opposition filing last week (see 2307310055). “MAD’s attempt to transform a civil defamation case into a license revocation action” would put the FCC “on a collision course with the First Amendment,” the filing said. MAD’s petition “attempts to make much of an unrelated, partially adjudicated civil defamation claim that concerned a cable network under common ownership with [Fox Television Stations],” said the filing. “An unrelated civil matter has no bearing on Fox 29 Philadelphia’s license renewal application.” MAD hasn’t provided any information of the type the FCC traditionally considers in assessing the character qualifications of a broadcaster or its ownership, the filing said. Taking up MAD’s request for a hearing ”would amount to an unlawful rewriting of the Commission’s Character Policy Statement,” and “decades of precedent implementing it,” the filing said. “There is no obligation of a broadcast licensee more fundamental than the obligation to serve the public interest by truthfully informing viewers,” emailed former Fox and Disney executive and lobbyist Preston Padden, who's involved in the MAD petition. “If the character requirement of Section 308 (b) of the Communications Act and the Commission’s own character and news distortion policies are to have any meaning, this license renewal application must, at a minimum, be designated for a hearing.”
Conservative Editor William Kristol and former Democratic FCC Commissioner Ervin Duggan filed a joint informal objection in support of the Media and Democracy Project’s petition to deny the license renewal of Fox-owned and operated WTXF-TV Philadelphia (see Ref:2307060065]). Former Fox executive and longtime lobbyist Preston Padden also supports the petition. Duggan is also a former president of PBS, and Kristol, who founded and edited The Weekly Standard, is now editor at large for political news site The Bulwark. Both worked in the administrations of past U.S. presidents, Duggan for Lyndon Johnson and Kristol for George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. “We believe there are more than sufficient grounds alleged in the MAD Petition for the Commission to designate the pending WTXF-TV (‘Fox 29’) renewal application for a hearing,” said the joint filing. MAD has argued that information released during Dominion Voting System's legal proceeding against Fox --which ended in a settlement -- demonstrates that the network deliberately misled viewers about the 2020 election and Jan. 6 attack, thus violating little-used FCC rules against news distortion. “Doing so would enable the Commission to develop a record as to the problematic conduct of Fox 29’s parent, Fox Corporation.” The FCC’s policy on character requirements for broadcast licensees “provides the framework for the Commission to look beyond the four corners of an individual station’s record in licensing proceedings and to consider affiliated entities’ conduct when appropriate,” the filing said. The filing cites an ongoing license proceeding over character issues involving an AM radio station owned by a former Tennessee state legislator convicted of making false statements on a tax form (see 2303280039). The WTXF situation “presents the Commission with the opportunity to take a different tack with FOX stations than it has in the past -- one more consistent with the approach it frequently takes against smaller stations in less complex license renewal contexts," the filing said. Fox didn’t comment.
A Media and Democracy Project (MAD) request to alter the ex parte status of the license renewal proceeding for Fox-owned WTXF-TV Philadelphia is “procedurally improper” and would prejudice Fox’s rights in the renewal process (see 2307180071), said Fox Television Stations in a letter Wednesday. “It is exceedingly rare for the Commission to place a license renewal proceeding under the more permissive procedures for permit-but-disclose proceedings,” the letter said. MAD’s request to change the status of the proceeding “is just one symptom of this fatal flaw of the Petition,” Fox said. “Grant of MAD’s Petition to Deny would fundamentally and unlawfully alter the Commission’s rules and policies governing license renewals, including its well-established character policies.”