Fox: Sending WTXF to Hearing Would Violate 1st Amendment

The FCC should promptly dismiss the Media and Democracy Project’s petition to deny WTXF-TV Philadelphia’s license renewal, said Fox Television Stations in an opposition filing last week (see 2307310055). “MAD’s attempt to transform a civil defamation case into a license revocation action” would put the FCC “on a collision course with the First Amendment,” the filing said. MAD’s petition “attempts to make much of an unrelated, partially adjudicated civil defamation claim that concerned a cable network under common ownership with [Fox Television Stations],” said the filing. “An unrelated civil matter has no bearing on Fox 29 Philadelphia’s license renewal application.” MAD hasn’t provided any information of the type the FCC traditionally considers in assessing the character qualifications of a broadcaster or its ownership, the filing said. Taking up MAD’s request for a hearing ”would amount to an unlawful rewriting of the Commission’s Character Policy Statement,” and “decades of precedent implementing it,” the filing said. “There is no obligation of a broadcast licensee more fundamental than the obligation to serve the public interest by truthfully informing viewers,” emailed former Fox and Disney executive and lobbyist Preston Padden, who's involved in the MAD petition. “If the character requirement of Section 308 (b) of the Communications Act and the Commission’s own character and news distortion policies are to have any meaning, this license renewal application must, at a minimum, be designated for a hearing.”