Can the FCC revoke Fox News' License?

 

Can the FCC revoke Fox News'

FCC broadcast licenses include a requirement that the licensee operate in the public interest. It’s clear that Fox News does not — lying is not in the public interest. Spreading conspiracy theories is not in the public interest. Enabling malfeasance, corruption, and abuse of power by elected officers in not in the public interest.  It’s not just a difference of opinion, it’s qualitatively different. They may all be in Rupert Murdoch’s interest , but not in the public interest. Their formal “news” programs may show a modicum of journalistic ethics, but their “opinion” programs do not. So the first question is, does the FCC have any interest in seeing that Fox News deals in facts? Given the political realities behind Trump’s appointment of the FCC chairman, I leave that to the reader to figure out… but the second, and more important question is, does the FCC have any jurisdiction over cable media at all? 

It would seem that they don’t. The term “broadcast” has been narrowly interpreted by the Supreme Court to refer exclusively to the TV and radio airwaves — cable doesn’t count. The convoluted reasoning behind that determination is more than my poor brain can deal with (I only went to MIT, so clearly I don’t have the mental equipment needed to deal with narcissistic tribal solipsism), but it’s what we’re stuck with. Clearly, if Fox News were on the airwaves, revoking their license would be a slam dunk. But cable has its own rules.

So, let’s deal with semantics for a moment. Cable and the Internet run over the same physical media — just ask Comcast, for instance. Streamed movies, cable TV, FaceBook, email, and this blog, we all go from producer to consumer over wires and/or fiber optics. However, all of the cable TV stations operate from one source to many consumers over that cable. In networking terms, they are either multicast or broadcast, and since broadcast (with channels) is easier, as moderated by cable modems, that’s what gets used.

Note that word, “broadcast”. That’s the actual description of the process followed. So it’s long past time for he FCC, and the Supreme Court, to agree that “broadcast” means “broadcast”, regardless of whether it comes over a cable or through the ether, and that cable media must follow the same requirements as airwave media when broadcasting.

It would be a vastly healthier world if Fox news was not permitted to continually poison the dialogue of the body politic by lying to its audience. It’s time to call out them, and the Supreme Court, on it. 

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