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The outgoing Democratic chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission is taking bold steps on her way out, rejecting what she described as four attempts to weaponize the government’s television licensing authority for political purposes.
Activists on both the right and the left may be disappointed. But Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said the agency must “take a stand on behalf of the First Amendment.”
Thus, on Thursday, according to a press release obtained by CNN, she rejects all petitions and complaints pending before the FCC which, she asserted, “seek to restrict freedom of the press”.
One of the petitions targeted a Fox-owned television station in an effort to hold the Murdochs accountable for Fox News Channel’s lies. The other three efforts were pro-Trump in nature and related to the recent presidential campaign.
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“The facts and legal circumstances in each of these cases are different,” Rosenworcel wrote. “But what they share is that they seek to weaponize the FCC’s licensing authority in a way that is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment. To do so would set a dangerous precedent. This is why we reject it here.
Rosenworcel isn’t just tidying up before her term ends Jan. 20, she’s trying to convince others of the value of a clean home. She clearly fears that President-elect Donald Trump could use the agency that oversees U.S. telecommunications to punish media outlets he doesn’t like.
During the presidential campaign, Trump called for all major U.S. television news networks to be punished for one reason or another, according to a CNN review of his speeches and social media posts. On at least 25 occasions, Trump has said certain licenses should be revoked, almost always in reaction to interview questions he didn’t like or programs he hated.
The FCC, which grants eight-year licenses to television and radio stations and has not denied a license renewal in decades, has historically prided itself on its independence.
But Trump’s pick for FCC chairman, Commissioner Brendan Carr, echoed (in more polite terms) Trump’s grievances with the media and spoke sympathetically about some of the ongoing complaints against the owners of stations. In a statement released Thursday, Carr said Rosenworcel’s decisions could be reversed when he takes over the agency.
“Over the past 18 months, the Biden FCC has maintained that it would be in the public interest to consider revoking the license of a Fox broadcast station,” he said. “Along the way, the Biden FCC has set a new agency precedent and breathed new life into dormant cases. Maybe he regrets doing it. Or maybe he just regrets running out of time. Either way, any partisan action taken at midnight here can be undone by the agency’s new leadership.
While the plaintiffs could refile once Carr takes office next week, Rosenworcel rejects their offers to send a broader message.
In doing so, “we are drawing a clear line at a time when clarity on government interference in the free press is needed more than ever,” Rosenworcel’s statement said. “The steps we are taking make two things clear. First, the FCC should not be the president’s speech police. Second, the FCC should not be the censor-in-chief of journalism.”
Rosenworcel has spoken out against Trump’s licensing threats in the past, but this mass firing is a bigger statement, officially putting the Biden-era FCC on the government’s role vis-à-vis media regulation before the start of the second Trump era.
Industry observers wondered what Rosenworcel and other Democratic FCC commissioners might do about the long-running petition to revoke the license of Fox’s local station in Philadelphia, since its parent company also owns the anti-cable channel. Democrat Fox News.
Former Fox Broadcasting executive Preston Padden and other activists have argued that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, the father and son who control Fox Corp, should be held responsible for Fox promoting Trump’s lies about 2020 elections. Rupert “does not have the character required to hold broadcast licenses,” Padden told CNN.
The FCC denies his request because the so-called “character evaluation” conflicts with the First Amendment and because the station in question did not clearly fail to comply with the agency’s rules.
Indeed, Rosenworcel says FCC procedures should not be used to penalize an opponent of the current administration, lest the same thing happen again under the next administration.
His statement also addressed three complaints that were all filed last fall by the Center for American Rights, a conservative nonprofit group. One filing accused ABC News of favoring Vice President Kamala Harris in a presidential debate, another complaint concerned how CBS News edited an interview with Harris, and a third concerned NBC’s “SNL” show featuring featured Harris without giving Trump the same time.
Rosenworcel said the four cases “ask the FCC to penalize TV stations because they don’t like the channels’ behavior, content or coverage,” and that’s simply not the government’s role American.
The press freedom group, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, welcomed Rosenworcel’s decision to reject the petitions.
“The FCC’s power to control news content is rightly limited, precisely because the government should not be the arbiter of truth,” Bruce Brown, RCFP executive director, said in a statement. . “The alternative is nothing less than censorship of the public airwaves which continue to be an indispensable source of information for millions of Americans. »
