As one of her last acts before leaving office, the Democratic chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission ruled against four petitions seeking to punish television networks for how they cover and satirize presidential politics.
Jessica Rosenworcel tells NPR that she wants to draw a clear line against ideological meddling from President-elect Donald Trump, whose rhetorical attacks against the networks stepped up last fall.
Three of the complaints are from a group aligned with Trump. The fourth sought to block Fox Corp.'s local TV division's renewal of the license for its Philadelphia station over corporate sibling Fox News's promotion of lies about fraud in the 2020 elections.
"We don't have the luxury of doing anything other than making very, very clear that this agency and its licensing authority should not be weaponized in a way that is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment," Rosenworcel says.
"This agency should not be the president's speech police and this agency shouldn't be journalism's censor-in-chief," she adds. "By taking action on these four petitions - from the right and the left - we're making those principles clear."
A former senior Democratic FCC official broke with Rosenworcel on social media. Gigi Sohn, who was unsuccessfully nominated by President Biden to become a commissioner, called the dismissal of the petition against Fox a "failure to lead."
New chairman has signaled tough scrutiny of TV networks
Brendan Carr, the FCC commissioner who will ascend to the chairman's role on Monday with Trump's inauguration, has made clear on social media that he intends to use his new position as a bully pulpit against the three big legacy broadcast networks that he views as unfair to Trump: ABC, CBS and NBC. (Carr did not reply to a request for comment.)
The FCC does not directly regulate what the networks put on the air. But it grants licenses to local stations – many of which are owned by or affiliated with the networks – that broadcast programming the networks create. And that has proven a pressure point in the current moment.
The Center for American Rights, a conservative public interest law firm, sought to have the FCC punish ABC's Philadelphia station over the network's handling of the September 2024 debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump bitterly attacked ABC moderators for fact-checking several of his claims. The petition alleged the ABC station had failed to present an unbiased news program.
The center also sought to force WCBS in New York City, which is owned by CBS and is its largest station, to release full transcripts from the network's October 7 interview with Harris. The network used a different excerpt from her answer to a question on 60 Minutes than it did on Face The Nation. The law firm's complaint argued that the release of the transcript would repair a breach of the public trust. Trump, who pulled out of his own planned interview with CBS, had alleged CBS had distorted the interview to aid Harris.
A question of equal time at NBC
In a third case, the center alleged that NBC had unfairly given Harris an advantage by featuring her for a brief slot on Saturday Night Live right before the election. The center's lawyers pointed to the broadcast on NBC's New York City flagship station, WNBC, to allege a blatant violation of the FCC's equal time provisions during an election, and called it election interference.
The grant of equal time requires a complaint from the opposing side. In this case, however, NBC and the Trump campaign separately told NPR that the network had contacted campaign officials before any concerns were raised. NBC ran a video taped by Trump the next day during an NBC broadcast of NASCAR and a post-game NFL show. A spokesperson for the campaign told NPR that it was satisfied with the arrangement.
Similarly, Hung Cao, a Republican who ran in Virginia for a U.S. Senate seat, struck a deal to run ads on NBC stations serving the state in key time slots after Democratic Senator Tim Kaine also appeared on the episode of Saturday Night Live.
Rosenworcel says those actions more than satisfied the legal requirements. The Center for American Rights did not respond to a request for comment.
Harm invoked from false claims on Fox News in 2020 race
The remaining complaint filed with the FCC came from a liberal advocacy group highly critical of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News. It sought to block Fox Corp.'s ability to win renewal of the license of a local Fox station in Philadelphia. Fox paid $787.5 million to settle a defamation suit from the voting-machine company Dominion Voting Systems over false claims that the company had rigged the 2020 election for President Biden. Evidence that surfaced in the case showed Murdoch was aware Biden won fairly.
Another defamation suit against Fox News from a second voting tech company, Smartmatic, is scheduled to go to trial later this year.
The petition also cites Rupert Murdoch's unsuccessful legal effort to wrest shared control of the company through a family trust from three of his children after his death in favor of his son Lachlan.
The petition hinged on the FCC's ability to evaluate the character of station owners. Among the complainants: William Kristol, a founding editor of the Murdoch-owned magazine The Weekly Standard (now defunct) and was a Fox News contributor, and Preston Padden, a network TV veteran who helped Murdoch launch the Fox broadcast network, became his chief Washington lobbyist, and remained a confidant and adviser even after leaving the company.
Fox Corp. declined to comment.
In a joint statement, Padden and the Media and Democracy Project said their petition did not violate First Amendment concerns and they intend to appeal to the full commission after Carr takes over as chairman.
"Our Petition to Deny [Fox Corp.'s renewal of the Philadelphia station license] is based on judicial findings that Fox [News] made repeated false statements that undermined the electoral process and resulted in property damage, injury, and death; that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch engaged in a 'carefully crafted scheme' in 'bad faith' to deprive Lachlan's siblings of the control to which they are entitled under an irrevocable trust; and that 'Murdoch knowingly caused the corporation to violate the law'," Padden and the Media and Democracy Project said in a joint statement. "It simply will be wrong if the Murdochs and Fox escape any responsibility for their prominent role for the riot at the Capitol on January 6th [2021] and the efforts to overturn the results of a presidential election."
Rosenworcel says she believes the FCC wasn't an appropriate forum in which to fight that battle - or those waged by the Center for American Rights.
"The First Amendment is a cornerstone of our democracy and we've got to make sure our government institutions protect and preserve it," Rosenworcel says.
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