July 3, 2023: MAD petitions to deny Fox license

The Media and Democracy Project (MAD) petitioned the FCC to deny Fox’s license-renewal application for WTXF-TV, in Philadelphia.

MAD  – a non-partisan, all-volunteer, grassroots civic membership organization fighting for a more informative and pro-democracy media operating in the public interest – also asked the Commission to hold an evidentiary hearing on whether Fox is qualified to retain its broadcast license.

As an FCC broadcast licensee, WTXF, one of 29 FOX subsidiary broadcast stations, has a basic statutory duty to conduct its operations in the public interest. The group believes it has not done so, relying on the court decision in Dominion v. FOX, which found that FOX’s broadcasts leading up to January 6 repeatedly were false and held that FOX had defamed the voting machine company. The intentional distortion of news, authorized at the highest levels of FOX's corporate structure, and fabricated by management and on-air personalities, represents a severe breach of the FCC's policy on licensee character qualifications.

The court decision in the defamation case filed in March 2021 by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox verifies this behavior, MAD says. In March 2023, the Delaware Superior Court filed summary judgment, finding that every disputed statement a Fox entity had made about Dominion was in fact false, as Dominion had claimed.

Such a torrent of lies made to audiences seeking news represents a severe breach of the FCC’s character qualifications for broadcast-TV license owners, according to the petition. It shows a strong propensity on the part of Fox management and companies to lie knowingly and lie about matters that concern the public interest. Therefore, the MAD petitioners argue, the FCC has the duty to hold Fox accountable by withdrawing its license to operate a broadcast TV station.

MAD’s petition can be found here.

The press release can be found here.