Former Democratic FCC commissioner and PBS President Ervin Duggan and onetime Weekly Standard editor and Fox News contributor Bill Kristol have teamed up to back a Federal Communications Commission inquiry into whether Fox has the character qualifications to hold its 29 TV station licenses.
The Media and Democracy Project (MAD), citing Fox’s settlement of the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit over election misinformation, earlier this month challenged the renewal of Fox’s WTFX Philadelphia, and by extension the company’s character qualifications for holding any TV station licenses at all.
In an informal letter of support for that formal inquiry, Duggan and Kristol, who are on the opposite ends of the political spectrum, said there were “more than sufficient grounds alleged in the MAD Petition for the Commission to designate the pending WTXF (Fox 29) renewal application for a hearing.”
They said there was evidence that Fox top executives “could have, but didn’t, stop the distribution of clearly false information via Fox News and Fox Business,” and that top Fox exec Rupert Murdoch admitted as much during the lawsuit. “We believe that this failure, which led to consequences dangerous to American democracy that are still unfolding to this day, is so shocking to the conscience, and so inconsistent with both the public interest and good journalistic practice, that there is a clear basis under the FCC’s Character Policy for the Commission to conduct a hearing.”
MAD said in challenging the station's license that Fox's senior management harmed the public by “wilfully distorting election news,” which the group said makes Fox “unqualified to remain a broadcast licensee.”
By its own count, Fox owns 29 full-power TV stations, including in 14 of the top 15 biggest markets, and owns duopolies — two stations — in each of the top three markets in the country, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
MAD wants the FCC to conduct an evidentiary hearing into Fox’s conduct, which would then implicate its ability to hold licenses for any of the stations if the FCC found that Fox Corp. lacked the standing to own WTFX.
“The FCC has the duty to hold Fox accountable and send a strong message that intentional, knowing news distortion will not be tolerated on America’s airwaves,” the group said.
Among the issues the FCC would consider in any review of character qualifications related to news distortion are: the seriousness of the misconduct; the nature of any participation by company managers and owners in the misconduct; any efforts to remedy the wrong; and the company’s past record regarding compliance with FCC rules and policies.
