Key Points
- Two years after challenging the license of a Fox-owned TV station, the MAD Project is now asking the FCC to revoke a license associated with a Fox News satellite truck.
- The group cited Fox News’ $787.5 million Dominion settlement, arguing it undermines the network’s character qualifications as a licensee.
- Fox News called the challenge frivolous, saying it improperly relitigates prior claims already rejected by the FCC.
More than two years after launching its initial crusade against the Fox News Channel by targeting the broadcast license of a co-owned television stations, the Media and Democracy (MAD) Project has set its sights on another Fox asset: One of its satellite broadcast licenses.
In a petition filed before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last month, an attorney representing the MAD Project filed a petition seeking to block Fox News Media’s renewal of a license associated with a temporary satellite uplink facility that is associated with the network’s field newsgathering activities.
The specific uplink call sign, E100098, is associated with a satellite truck used by Fox News to transmit from various locations across the United States, and is one of more than two dozen temporary fixed-earth stations that the network operates as part of its normal newsgathering practices.
Since the vehicle uses frequencies associated with satellite transmissions, its equipment must be licensed by the FCC to use spectrum set aside for that purpose, and Fox News has successfully renewed the license several times over the past two decades.
The network sought to renew the license for its satellite truck over the summer, according to FCC documents reviewed by The Desk. The matter is a typical license renewal, and generally invites little opposition.
But on November 18, an attorney with the MAD Project filed what it called a “petition to deny” the application for renewal, saying Fox News lacked the required character standing needed to continue operating its fixed-earth station as an FCC licensee.
In its petition, the attorney, Arthur Belendiuk, wrote that the character test should be weighed against a $787.5 million settlement reached by Fox News with Dominion Voting Systems in April 2023, after Dominion sued Fox News over its political coverage of the 2020 presidential election.
Dominion alleged Fox News hosts and guests defamed the company by airing and exacerbating conspiracy theories that claimed its machines used in some parts of the country switched votes for then-incumbent Donald Trump in favor of then-challenger Senator Joe Biden. No proof has ever materialized that Dominion’s machines switched votes or otherwise performed in an errant way. Biden won the presidential election that year.
Fox News was never legally found to have committed wrongdoing, though a judge overseeing the matter appeared to side with Dominion in procedural rulings before trial.
Evidence collected in the case, and later made public, revealed Fox News executives were largely aware that claims made about the election by some hosts and guests were factually inaccurate, but allowed them to be broadcast anyway. (The evidence was collected to support a pursued claim of “actual malice,” something that a judge determined a jury should decide, though the case never proceeded that far because it was settled.) The MAD Project contends senior Fox executives, including network founder Rupert Murdoch, allowed its hosts and guests to mislead viewers for ratings and profits.
The same argument was made in July 2023, when MAD Project petitioned the FCC to block an application filed by Fox for the renewal of its license associated with Philadelphia-based television station WTXF (Channel 29). After a prolonged period of public comment, the FCC sided against the MAD Project earlier this year by renewing WTXF’s license. An appeal on the matter is pending.
In its fresh challenge targeting a Fox-held license, the MAD Project restates many of its earlier complaints about the cable news channel’s political coverage after the 2020 election, and again uses the settlement with Dominion as standing that the network should lose an FCC-held license. The organization claims the conspiracy theories aired on Fox News “contributed” to the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters just a few months after the election was held.
“Its sole motivation for making statements it knew to be false was greed,” Belendiuk wrote in the petition. “Fox News was concerned about a drop in rating and revenues. It cared nothing for the damage it caused or the lives it ruined. The character of its principals is of primary factor in reviewing its qualifications to remain a Commission licensee under the Communications Act.”
The petition did not connect the satellite truck to any specific reporting that concerned Dominion or the 2020 election.
In late November, attorneys for the network fired off their response, painting MAD Project’s petition as a “frivolous attempt” to remedy its loss on the WTXF license matter by targeting another FCC-issued license with unsubstantiated and irrelevant claims of wrongdoing.
“(Fox News) has complied with Commission rules associated with operation of a licensed earth station, and it has not engaged in any conduct remotely relevant to assessment of character qualifications,” Katherine Meeks, the Executive Vice President and General Counsel for Fox News, wrote on November 28.
In her letter, which has not been previously made public, Meeks said MAD Project’s petition to deny was actually an informal objection, and that the organization was “abusing Commission process by attempting to relitigate its loss in front of the Media Bureau before the Space Bureau.” She noted that the MAD Project made the same allegations against Fox News when it challenged the WTXF license, and nothing new was present in its opposition to the routine renewal of its satellite truck license.
“MAD is engaged in forum shopping for another airing of its baseless allegations,” Meeks charged. “The Space Bureau should not countenance MAD’s inefficient and wasteful abuse of Commission and third-party resources.”
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Editor’s note: This story was updated Monday morning to clarify the intent behind certain evidence collected as part of Dominion’s former lawsuit against Fox News.
