A group of prominent former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) officials, including key staffers and commissioners appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents, issued a filing on Tuesday that warns the agency is trying to send a “chilling message” to broadcasters after it received petitions to deny ABC license renewals for eight of its local television stations.
The network’s licenses are up for early renewal after an extremely unusual order from the Brendan Carr-led FCC in late April, following criticism of ABC by Donald Trump and Melania Trump.
The group behind the filing includes Mark S Fowler, who served as FCC chair during Ronald Reagan’s presidency; Alfred C Sikes, who served as FCC chair during George HW Bush’s presidency; Thomas E Wheeler, who served as FCC chair during Barack Obama’s presidency; and several high-ranking lawyers and advisers to past commissioners.
“This early license renewal proceeding is unprecedented in the history of the Federal Communications Commission and a grave violation of both the Communications Act and the Constitution,” the coalition wrote in the filing. “Through this proceeding, the FCC seeks to censor Disney’s and ABC’s speech and send a chilling message to all broadcasters: carry speech we don’t like at your peril.”
Seeking to put the ABC license challenge into context, the group called the order “the latest attack in a sustained campaign by Chairman Carr and the Trump administration of threatening legal sanctions against licensees whose speech President Trump dislikes”.
The filing is a response to petitions to deny ABC’s license renewals submitted by conservative media watchdog the Media Research Center (MRC) and the Center for American Rights (CAR), a conservative legal organization that is closely aligned with Carr and has initiated several complaints against television networks premised on accusations of liberal bias. CAR’s petition to deny ABC’s license renewal accused the network of “[ignoring] long-standing Commission precedents and principles protecting the integrity of the news” and “[engaging] in explicit racial and gender discrimination”.
The coalition said in its Tuesday filing that the petitions should be denied because they ask the FCC to wade into “content and viewpoint regulation” and accusations of bias by punishing a network for their editorial decision-making – “a stunning – and plainly unconstitutional – expansion of the Commission’s role”.
“As former Chairs, Commissioners, Chiefs of Staff, General Counsels and Bureau Chiefs, we call on the Commission to respect the constitutional and congressional prohibitions on its ‘power of censorship’ and terminate this proceeding,” the group wrote.
Interested parties have until 5 August to reply to petitions to deny ABC’s licenses. After that time, the FCC could either grant the extension requests, a prospect that seems unlikely, or schedule hearings on the matter. The process has no clear timetable, leaving ABC and its eight local television stations mired in a cloud of uncertainty about their ability to continue broadcasting long-term.
