Ex post facto Fox-proofing?

WASHINGTON

FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth charges that the FCC rewrote parts of its report on broadcast rules to better position itself against a lawsuit from FOX TV.

He complains that a passage was added to bolster the agency's decision to retain the 35% coverage cap on broadcast ownership two weeks after the five commissioners' May 26 vote approving the report. No accident, he says. The revisions immediately followed Fox's decision to file a suit challenging the cap.

He questions whether the revisions can be considered part of the official record, given that they were made more than two weeks after the FCC's statutory deadline for filing the report and were not part of the record voted by the commissioners.