Simington Spars With Senators Over Trump's ABC Comments, WTXF Renewal
After senators sent letters to all five FCC commissioners Friday calling for the agency to avoid “weaponization” of its licensing authority against broadcasters, Commissioner Nathan Simington responded, saying the FCC should renew the license of Fox station WTXF-TV Philadelphia over the opposition of public interest group the Media and Democracy Project (MAD). Letters from Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., referenced recent comments from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump against ABC (see 2409120056).
The FCC “can demonstrate its commitment” to objectivity and the First Amendment “by bringing the intentional and unwarranted political delay in the renewal of WTXF-TV’s broadcast license to a close,” Simington wrote Friday, adding that he supports fairness and upholding freedom of speech in license determinations. “The Commissioner's statement is misguided,” MAD responded in a release. “He seems not to understand that the MAD petition against Fox29 has nothing to do with speech and is about the conduct of Fox's senior-most management.”
Markey and Wyden wrote Simington, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and the other three commissioners, urging the agency “not use its licensing authority for broadcast stations to retaliate against a broadcaster over its content or coverage” given the tenor of Trump's Wednesday comments about ABC. The candidate's “threat to revoke an FCC license over his dissatisfaction with ABC’s handling of the [presidential] debate is a serious threat to the First Amendment and antithetical to the FCC’s mission,” the lawmakers said in identical letters to the commissioners. “We urge you to denounce this lawless proposal and commit to upholding the First Amendment.” Trump's “statement is especially concerning considering his history of attempting to use the federal government’s authority to retaliate against news organizations,” including a 2017 call for NBC to lose its “license” over reporting of what he called “fake news” (see 1710110075), the senators said. Rosenworcel issued a statement Thursday declaring that the FCC “does not revoke licenses for broadcast stations simply because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes content or coverage.”
“Any weaponization of the FCC would be outrageous and unacceptable,” Markey and Wyden wrote. “As an initial matter, contrary to [Trump’s] comments this week, the FCC does not ‘license’ news organizations but licenses local broadcast stations. The FCC therefore could not revoke ABC News’s license because [the organization] does not hold an FCC license. More to the point, the revocation of a local broadcast station’s license for the reasons [Trump] articulated would clearly violate the First Amendment and undermine the FCC’s mission, pursuant to the Communications Act, to manage broadcast licenses in the public interest. The Commission should never revoke a broadcast license because a candidate dislikes a station’s news coverage.”
Trump’s repeated calls for revoking broadcasters' licenses over news coverage aren’t the same as MAD’s campaign against WTXF-TV’s license, MAD supporter and veteran telecom lobbyist Preston Padden said. The MAD petition “is based on Fox's conduct, not speech -- specifically the conduct of continuing to present knowingly false news for the purpose of maintaining its revenues.” Filings from MAD point to a 2023 Superior Court of Delaware ruling on a motion for summary judgment in Dominion Voting System’s defamation case against Fox over its 2020 election reporting: “The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that it is CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.” That case ended with Fox paying $787 million to Dominion in a settlement. “The presentation of false news by the Murdochs and the company they control flatly violates the Character requirement of the Communications Act and the FCC’s policy on News Distortion,” Padden said in an email. In its entire history, the FCC never has granted a license to an applicant recently found by a Court of Law to have presented false news.”
Fox didn’t comment on Simington’s letter but has argued that MAD’s petition seeks revocation of a broadcaster's license for content it didn’t air and would violate FCC precedent. Broadcast attorneys have told us they don’t expect the FCC to act on MAD’s petition anytime soon with the presidential election looming and said the agency is extremely unlikely to grant MAD’s petition. Padden disagrees. “In its entire history, the FCC never has granted a license to an applicant recently found by a Court of Law to have presented false news.” NAB, Fox and the FCC didn’t comment.
Some attorneys have, like Simington, compared MAD’s petition to Trump’s comments (see 2409120056), but public interest advocates said the two matters are distinct. “The WTXF case is about the licensee's character, which does not raise a First Amendment question,” said Andrew Schwartzman, senior counselor at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. The FCC’s policies on news distortion specifically cite intentional false reporting, said Free Press General Counsel Matt Wood, who praised the personal commitment to objectivity and the First Amendment that Simington expressed in his statement but said he should go further. If Simington “disagrees with President Trump, it would be good for him to say that,” Wood said. The former president nominated Simington as commissioner.