\n<\/p>\n
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 \u201cchilling message\u201d to broadcasters after it received petitions to deny ABC license renewals for eight of its local television stations.<\/p>\n
The network\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The group behind the filing includes Mark S Fowler, who served as FCC chair during Ronald Reagan\u2019s presidency; Alfred C Sikes, who served as FCC chair during George HW Bush\u2019s presidency; Thomas E Wheeler, who served as FCC chair during Barack Obama\u2019s presidency; and several high-ranking lawyers and advisers to past commissioners.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis 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,\u201d the coalition wrote in the filing. \u201cThrough this proceeding, the FCC seeks to censor Disney\u2019s and ABC\u2019s speech and send a chilling message to all broadcasters: carry speech we don\u2019t like at your peril.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seeking to put the ABC license challenge into context, the group called the order \u201cthe latest attack in a sustained campaign by Chairman Carr and the Trump administration of threatening legal sanctions against licensees whose speech President Trump dislikes\u201d.<\/p>\n
The filing is a response to petitions to deny ABC\u2019s 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\u2019s petition to deny ABC\u2019s license renewal accused the network of \u201c[ignoring] long-standing Commission precedents and principles protecting the integrity of the news\u201d and \u201c[engaging] in explicit racial and gender discrimination\u201d.<\/p>\n
The coalition said in its Tuesday filing that the petitions should be denied because they ask the FCC to wade into \u201ccontent and viewpoint regulation\u201d and accusations of bias by punishing a network for their editorial decision-making \u2013 \u201ca stunning \u2013 and plainly unconstitutional \u2013 expansion of the Commission\u2019s role\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs 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 \u2018power of censorship\u2019 and terminate this proceeding,\u201d the group wrote.<\/p>\n
Interested parties have until 5 August to reply to petitions to deny ABC\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 \u201cchilling message\u201d to broadcasters after it received petitions to deny ABC license renewals for eight of its local television<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[2055,794,2239,1859,25080,6111,742,2969,1085,1854,81,1952],"class_list":{"0":"post-51483","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-abc","9":"tag-administration","10":"tag-agency","11":"tag-chilling","12":"tag-exfcc","13":"tag-license","14":"tag-message","15":"tag-officials","16":"tag-review","17":"tag-sending","18":"tag-trump","19":"tag-warn"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}