Knoxville Radio: FCC Questions Integrity Of WJBE Owner

The owner of Knoxville, TN radio station, WJBE, is fighting back against the FCC as the agency is threatening to revoke his broadcast license because of a prior felony conviction.

Joe Armstrong, the owner of WJBE 99.7 FM/1040 AM — whose call letters pay tribute to the original WJBE's owner, the Godfather of Soul, James Brown — told NPR that the FCC is threatening to revoke his broadcast license over his prior conviction for a tax crime, one that occurred years before he took ownership of the station in 2012.

Armstrong said the radio station is a fixture in Knoxville, serving as a source of news for the Black community — being very much a community-oriented station.

The FCC is questioning whether Armstrong, a former long-serving state representative in the Tennessee General Assembly, would be able to own a radio station with integrity following his conviction in 2016 for making a false statement on his tax return.

Joe Armstrong

"It's not like this is something that happened, let's say, this year or last year — we're talking about something that happened in 2008," Armstrong said.

Around that time, Armstrong and a partner legally bought cigarette tax stamps that were later sold for a profit following the Tennessee legislature's vote to increase the state's cigarette tax, according to the Institute for Justice.

His accountant reportedly did not properly pay the taxes on this sale, resulting in Armstrong facing trouble with the IRS. In 2016, he was acquitted of most of the charges against him and was convicted of two counts of federal tax fraud. (Armstrong's accountant, Charles Stivers, was convicted of tax fraud and was granted probation in 2017.)

After Armstrong's conviction, the judge called his offense an "aberration" in an otherwise "exemplary life." Armstrong's civil rights, including his right to vote, were restored in 2020. In 2017, he reportedly let the FCC know about his conviction, which Armstrong says had caused no issues until last year.

Andrew Ward, the attorney representing the case, argues that Armstrong's previous conviction is irrelevant to his ability to own and operate WJBE responsibly, saying that stripping the station of its license hurts the community more than anything.

The FCC declined to comment on Armstrong's pending case, as the case is still in hearing. Paloma Perez, press secretary for the FCC, told NPR that the commission has a duty to ensure that everyone holding a license to use the public airwaves "does so in the public interest."