A media-focused public interest group is challenging the renewal of WTXF Fox 29′s broadcast license in a bid to hold the station’s parent company, the Fox Corp., accountable for reporting broadcast on Fox News Channel during the 2020 election, reports The Philly Inquirer.
In a petition filed this week, the Media and Democracy Project alleges that Fox broadcast “knowingly false narratives about the 2020 election” on the Fox News Channel, a cable station. A “good deal of that narrative” was rebroadcast on Fox 29, as well as other local Fox stations, the petition says.
As a result, the Media and Democracy Project is asking for an evidentiary hearing looking at Fox’s conduct. The FCC, it argues, has a duty to “hold Fox accountable and send a strong message that intentional, knowing news distortion will not be tolerated on America’s airwaves.”
In a statement, Fox Television Stations, a subsidiary of Fox Corp., called the filing “frivolous” and “completely without merit.”
“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,” the company said.
The group says the FCC requires broadcast licensees to abide by certain qualities that prove that they are qualified to operate an over-the-air station. Fox’s reporting during the 2020 election, it argues, violated those qualities.
“The intentional distortion of news, authorized at the highest levels of Fox’s corporate structure, and fabricated by management and on-air personalities, represents a severe breach of the FCC’s policy on licensee character qualifications,” the Media and Democracy Project said in a statement.
Cable networks like Fox News Channel aren’t regulated by the FCC, unlike broadcast stations like Fox 29, which Fox Television Stations has owned and operated since 1995. Its broadcast license is set to expire in August, and as part of the renewal process, the FCC allows petitions to deny the license.
The commission rarely takes up such petitions, and historically has avoided regulating broadcast content and speech for First Amendment reasons, said an FCC official who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the filing. The petition against Fox 29 is similarly unlikely to be taken up, as its reasoning falls outside of the commission’s purview, the official added.
The group members include Preston Padden, a senior VP at Fox Broadcasting Co. from 1990 to 1997. According to Padden, he had personal communications with Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch that indicate he knew what Fox News was reporting was not true.
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