Aug. 22, 2023: Media Execs Ervin S. Duggan and William Kristol FCC filing rebutted arguments in Fox’s Aug. 2nd reply

On August 22, 2023, former FCC Chair and Johnson administration veteran Ervin S. Duggan and conservative commentator and former Fox-News analyst William Kristol filed a joint response to Fox’s Aug. 2 reply to MAD’s petition.

During the last broadcast-TV license-renewal cycle in 2012, Fox Television Stations argued – as they do in 2023 -- that the conduct of the broadcast station’s “parent company and of affiliates not directly involved in station operations cannot impact a station’s license renewal application, even if that conduct violates the FCC’s policy statements on licensee character,” Duggan and Kristol wrote.

However, the FCC Media Bureau in 2012 “went out of its way” to state that it did not endorse Fox’s claim that conduct by other Fox entities is irrelevant to the question of Fox’s broadcast ownership, Duggan and Kristol say.

Fox also contends that deeming any speech, including deliberate lies, as corporate misconduct is barred by the First Amendment.

But Duggan and Kristol argue that relevant misconduct by other Fox entities can include falsehoods promoted by those entities.

In a ruling in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case against Fox, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis declared that the falsehoods promoted by Fox entities about the 2020 election were in fact a form of behavior – corporate conduct, Duggan and Kristol point out. Davis “established that the falsehoods…were neither mistakes nor mere expressions of questionable opinions. Rather” they were “deliberate choices made in an effort to retain viewers.”

“Such conduct can form the basis for a Commission character inquiry in connection with a license renewal. That’s right – despite the Fox Reply’s strenuous efforts to obscure the point through First Amendment rhetoric, the character and public-interest standards of the Federal Communications Commission are in fact standards of behavior, not speech,” Duggar and Kristol assert.

“This behavior, these acts and omissions – conscious choices, each and every one – surely justify and require an inquiry into whether FOX and its owners are capable of choosing principle and the public interest over mere profit.”

Duggan’s and Kristol’s filing is here 
The press release can be found here.