Three decades ago, Preston Padden was one of the stars of the FOX Broadcasting Company. As a senior executive from 1990 to 1997, his efforts were seen as substantial in making the network viable. Padden, in those years, believed in the network’s mission.
“He [FOX founder Rupert Murdoch] was my hero,” Padden said to NPR. “There was no question in my mind that what we were doing was good for America, good for viewers, good for advertisers, good for television stations, good for democracy.”
But now, twenty-five years later, Padden has a different view. In the 1990s, he lobbied for waivers of laws and regulations that would prove helpful to FOX. After the 2020 presidential election, however, he was dismayed that the network gave a platform to the claims that the election was fraudulent. Since then, he has joined forces with a media reform group petitioning the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to start evidentiary hearings that could block the renewal of the television license of WTXF, Fox 29 in Philadelphia. And Padden is not the only former FOX executive to support this effort.
The founding President of Fox Broadcasting Company, Jamie Kellner, announced his support of an FCC hearing on the renewal of WTXF’s license. If the FCC holds a hearing and decides to revoke WTXF’s license, it potentially could jeopardize the license renewals of the twenty-eight other FOX-owned television stations.
On July 3, the grassroots reform group The Media and Democracy Project filed a petition with the FCC requesting the Commission hold an evidentiary hearing into FOX’s television station in Philadelphia, WTXF, Fox 29, for their conduct in willfully broadcasting false news about the 2020 presidential elections that contributed to civil unrest. Readers can follow the latest developments in this case at this link.
While the FCC leaves cable channels largely unregulated, over-the-air broadcasts by local television and radio stations are more closely monitored by the Commission. Those licensed TV and radio stations, according to the FCC, have a greater responsibility to operate in the public interest. Another reason for the extra scrutiny for local television and radio stations is that there is only a limited amount of available space on the radio and television spectrum.
In the past, with a few exceptions, television license renewals by the FCC have been almost routine. But with the revelations in the U.S. Dominion, Inc. v. Fox News Network, LLC case that demonstrated the network knowingly spread lies about the 2020 election being stolen, media reformers are viewing the verdict as a potential game changer.
“Section 308B of the Communications Act, a law, requires the FCC to inquire into the character qualifications of anyone granted a license as a public trustee to broadcast on the public airwaves,” Padden tells The Progressive. “And if the character requirement in the Communications Act is to have any meaning at all it surely must mean that you can not present false news.”
Other insiders agree with Padden’s view that there are unique circumstances surrounding the renewal of WTXF’s license.
Hundt notes that the allegations against FOX are not about the exercise of protected free speech, but about the decision to lie in order to obtain profit.
“What we are talking about is an alleged corporate conspiracy to enforce misinformation and lying as the company behavior in order to capture the attention, and the passionate attention, of a certain audience for the purpose of selling advertising,” says Reed Hundt, former chair of the FCC from 1993 to 1997, in an interview with The Progressive.
While Hundt and Padden view the results of the hearing as pivotal, Alfred Sikes, another former FCC head, underscored the process itself.
“It would provide a next step in a governance process that would cause serious allegations to be adjudicated, hearings to be held, witnesses to be called,” Sikes says. “The process would give integrity to those allegations and to the FCC itself.” Sikes served as the chairman under President George H.W. Bush from 1989 until early 1993.
FOX has framed the challenge to its license as a violation of its First Amendment right to free speech. Media reformers see free speech as an issue separate from those raised in their challenge.
“The license is held as a public trust,” says Tom Wheeler, FCC chair from 2013 to 2017. “If that trust is violated…the First Amendment clearly is something that enters into the discussion but would be seen as separate from the grant of a public trust license.”
Hundt notes that the allegations against FOX are not about the exercise of protected free speech, but about the decision to lie in order to obtain profit, which if proven true, he asserted, would be fraud.
“We respect the First Amendment, but that is different from having a hearing to see whether they are in compliance with their obligations as a broadcast station,” William Kristol says. “The FOX statement literally would suggest the Dominion lawsuit was against the First Amendment.” Kristol is the founder of the political magazine The Weekly Standard, a frequent commentator on cable news, and editor-at-large for the center-right publication The Bulwark.
The support from many high-profile conservatives for opening evidentiary hearings on the renewal of WTXF’s license may be a sign that the issue does not split along traditional left versus right lines.
“This is not political. This is about presenting false news,” Padden adds. “Can you picture Walter Cronkite sitting there night after night telling lies to the American people?”
If the FCC decides to open an evidentiary hearing on WTXF, and then based on the findings, chooses not to renew their license, the fallout could spread to the other twenty-eight FOX-owned television stations when their licenses come up for renewal, beginning in 2028.
“If an investigation revealed that, in fact, there was a corporate conspiracy agreement to systematically lie, misinform . . . then why should FOX be allowed to be in the broadcasting business at all?” says Hundt.
But other supporters of a hearing are not as convinced that the denial of WTXF’s license renewal is necessarily the answer.
“My position, at least, isn’t that the FCC has to yank the station tomorrow from FOX, but that it is perfectly reasonable to be concerned post-Dominion, and so the FCC should address those concerns,” says Kristol.
Television license renewal challenges have not just been considered by grassroots citizens groups. Richard Nixon was seriously considering challenging The Washington Post’s TV licenses before the Watergate scandal. Donald Trump considered challenging the licenses of NBC. But the motives of those two Presidents hinged on weakening media outlets they saw as hostile, rather than need to protect the public interest.
When asked about whether a successful license challenge could have the unintended consequence of encouraging challenges from government entities intent on silencing media critics, the interviewees for this article largely scoffed.
“It [the idea of the denial of the renewal of NBC’s licenses] seemed to have occurred to Trump before we filed any of these letters [with the FCC],” Kristol explains. “The authoritarians don’t need us to remind them of these possibilities.”
Sikes explains that when he served as FCC chair, George H.W. Bush was so preoccupied with foreign crises like the 1991 Gulf War that he simply did not have time to ask the FCC to take action to block license renewals.
“The FCC has rules for a purpose,” says former FCC chair Wheeler. “[It] has processes to determine whether those rules are being followed. And that, I believe, is what’s the issue here.”