UPDATE: Our ongoing fight at the FCC to hold Rupert Murdoch and Fox accountable for knowingly broadcasting 2020 election lies.
MAD urges the FCC to deny Murdoch-owned Fox satellite uplink application. Meanwhile, Carr continues playing partisan games with licenses.
On November 18, 2025 the Media & Democracy Project (MAD) submitted a petition to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking to deny a Fox News Network (FNN) renewal application for the company’s satellite uplink license. Fox News used its satellite access to knowingly broadcast false information tied to the 2020 election, and we continue to assert that Fox (and its most senior leadership, including Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch) lacks the character qualifications to remain an FCC licensee.
Justifications for the satellite petition are similar to our 2023 Petition to Deny that we filed against the broadcast license renewal of Fox-owned WTXF-TV in Philadelphia. That petition was dismissed along with others against ABC, NBC, and CBS in 2024. However, in 2025, Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr reinstated the partisan petitions against other networks but failed to reinstate the only petition based on a judicial finding. In February 2025, we filed an Application for Review of that decision, which remains pending.
While the petition under appeal at the FCC’s Media Bureau was directed at a particular Fox affiliate television station, our most recent filing points to the overwhelming evidence that the Fox News Network “used its earth station license to knowingly and willfully attempt to alter the outcome of a federal election” and says “it places the question of FNN’s character qualifications squarely before the Space Bureau.”
As a reminder and for context, in a lawsuit brought against FNN by Dominion Voting Systems after the 2020 election, evidence was presented showing that Fox leadership intentionally and willingly allowed the broadcast of information about the 2020 election that they knew was false and misleading. The judge also ruled it “CRYSTAL clear”that none of Fox’s statements relating to Dominion were true, and Fox ultimately admitted such, settling with Dominion for $787.5 million. These deceptions caused tremendous damage to the United States of America, which the FCC has a duty to serve.
The FCC cannot simply look past “CRYSTAL clear” character flaws in Fox leadership, considering the same people run the network today. Leaders at the FCC must consider the negative impacts that the conduct of Fox ownership has already had to date, and what similar violations of trust might lead to in the future.
On November 28, 2025, FNN filed a legal response to the most recent MAD petition and, in our rebuttal, we reiterated that FNN had “used its licenses to lie to the very people it was licensed to serve. It did so for the basest of motives, the personal gain of its controlling shareholders.” Our response continued: “The Dominion decision makes it clear that FNN’s corporate owners and top executives were concerned about falling ratings and revenues after the 2020 election. To boost ratings, they concocted a false narrative that the election was rigged. They used its licensed earth stations to disseminate this false narrative of a rigged election. FNN was motivated by pure unalloyed greed, not in a belief that the election had been unfair or rigged as it nightly told its audience. At all times FNN knew that what it was broadcasting was a series of dangerous lies designed to undermine the very fabric of our democracy.”
In a separate “Informal Comment” submitted to the FCC in support of MAD, Preston Padden who was a president at the Fox Broadcasting Company and helped Rupert Murdoch launch the network, made it clear that this is not a First Amendment issue: “The MAD Petition is not based on news distortion or media bias. Rather, the MAD Petition is based on the Character requirement contained in the Communications Act, which requires an applicant for a broadcast license to demonstrate that it has the requisite character qualifications to serve as a trustee of the public airways.”
We think that the FCC should work on behalf of the American people in a non-partisan fashion and that “public interest” includes not knowingly broadcasting lies. Being granted licenses for the airwaves - and via satellite - is a privilege and not a right. We will keep you updated on our David vs. Goliath struggle to hold the Murdochs and Fox News Corporation accountable for broadcasting lies into the minds of the American public.
Please invest in our effort. We are a small grassroots org and need to hire attorneys to fight this fight on behalf of a better-informed America. You can contribute here: https://givebutter.com//fight-fox
Share your thoughts with us below or by email: info@mediaanddemocracyproject.org
DISCLAIMER: Due to our concerns about Substack’s leadership, ownership and agendas that conflict with our values, MAD is in the process of finding a new home for our blog. We will keep you posted.
For heaven’s sake, and for our democracy’s sake, their corrupt propaganda displays disguised as news media need to be called out in a matter public arena, like broadcast from their organization, and each and every one of them held accountable for their lies!
Thank you SO very much for taking this on. You are a blessing to our democracy.