Erik McGregor
In its opposition to a petition calling for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reject the broadcast license renewal of its Philadelphia TV station, Fox Corp. said taking a local channel off the air because Fox News aired false 2020 election claims would be a “violation of the First Amendment.”
The company’s objection, which was filed on Wednesday, is in response to the “non-partisan” Media and Democracy Project’s request that the FCC refuse Fox 29 Philadelphia’s renewal application on the basis of Dominion Voting System’s defamation suit against Fox over election misinformation, which was settled this spring for $787.5 million.
It also comes just days after former Fox News pundit Bill Kristol and ex-PBS president Ervin Duggan further urged the FCC to deny Fox 29 its license, saying that the “Dominion case unequivocally established that Fox News Channel repeatedly disseminated false news, and the Fox cable channels and its broadcast ones are clearly intimately linked.”