NAB, Pa. Broadcasters Want Petition to Deny Fox Station Dismissed
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…
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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.