Aug 9, 2023: David Folkenflik reported on object of the petition on NPR
On August 9, 2023, National Public Radio’s Morning Edition aired David Folkenflik’s conversations with media industry veterans about the Fox broadcast license, including petitioner Preston Padden, and Gigi Sohn, whose Biden nominate to the FCC.
During the 2020 election season, "I could see the tremendous damage that, in my opinion, Fox News Channel was doing to the country," said former Fox executive Preston Padden. "I could see it in the news. I could see it in friends and family who watched Fox News. And I thought, 'You helped establish Rupert [Murdoch] as a force in American television. You, Preston, have a responsibility to do something'."
In recent decades, though, Fox has rarely exercised its authority to strip away broadcast licenses, said former FCC chairman Michael K. Powell, a Republican appointee. "It's a very, very high hurdle for the petitioners.”
But though non-renewals of broadcast licenses are relatively rare, Fox’s argument that the behavior of the Fox-owned cable channel Fox News is irrelevant to the WTXF case is invalid, said Gigi Sohn, a former FCC staffer and co-founder and CEO of the communications policy advocacy group Public Knowledge, who withdrew as a Biden administration nominee for FCC commissioner earlier this year after coming under attack from some industry groups.
"It doesn't matter that it was Fox News, and not [the Fox broadcast TV station] that knowingly lied to the public about the 2020 election results,” Sohn told NPR. “They have the same ownership, and it's that ownership that lacks the requisite character to be a broadcast licensee.”
Furthermore, while broadcast -license renewals aren’t rejected often, it does happen. Her research turned up three radio license rejections in 1980 alone that involved license owners’ character issues, for example, she said.
"Under the FCC's Character Policy, lying to the government is about the worst sin a broadcast licensee can commit. While Fox did not technically lie to the government, it lied to the American people in a way that had a serious negative impact on our entire democracy. I'd argue that this is worse than lying to the government.”
David Folkenflik’s NPR piece is here.