Petition seeks to deny renewal of Fox 29′s broadcast license

A media-focused public interest group is challenging the renewal of 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.

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.

While the petition does not directly take issue with Fox 29′s reporting, it notes that the station broadcasts Fox News Sunday, which is produced by Fox News Channel. Doing so, the organization claims, makes the station an “over-the-air extension of Fox News Channel.”

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 petition, however, is “different from garden variety complaints” in that it cites evidence of intentional news distortion by Fox in a lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems that resulted in a $787.5 million settlement, said Matt Wood, vice president of policy at Free Press, a Washington-based advocacy organization. As a result, he added, it is valid to question whether Fox, as the owner of Fox 29, is fit to hold a broadcast license for the station.

“The FCC has the ability and duty to ask these questions,” Wood said. “If a licensee knowingly distorts news, it is in their scope to question what the final decision should be.”

Among the petition’s backers is Preston Padden, a former Fox executive who left the company in 1997 and exchanged emails with Fox Corp. chair Rupert Murdoch that surfaced during the Dominion case.

“In my opinion, as a result of Fox’s knowingly false narrative, large numbers of that radicalized population ransacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, causing injury, property damage, and attacking the very foundation of our democracy,” Padden said in a supporting declaration with the petition.

The FCC, meanwhile, notes online that it is “illegal for broadcasters to intentionally distort the news,” and that the commission “may act on complaints if there is documented evidence of such behavior.” Still, Wood said he would be surprised if action was taken.

Going after Fox 29′s broadcast license renewal is something of a “bankshot” against the station’s parent company, said Brian Stelter, author of the forthcoming book Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy. Because of the lack of FCC regulatory overview for cable networks, challenging local station’s licenses is “the only avenue” available.

“They are aiming at Fox 29, but trying to hit Fox News,” Stelter said.

That approach is “troubling” for media commentator and Northeastern University professor Dan Kennedy, who described himself as a “near-absolutist on the First Amendment.”

“They’re going after a local Fox owned-and-operated station because of what another part of the Fox media empire is doing,” Kennedy said. “Fox 29 ought to be held accountable for what appears on Fox 29. It shouldn’t be used as a pawn in a larger war for what’s going on with Fox News Channel.”