First Amendment Lawyer Abrams Supports Campaign Against Fox Renewal
Longtime First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams is supporting the campaign against a license renewal for Fox station WTXF Philadelphia (see 2310100068). Abrams is known for defending newspapers and broadcasters against the government in high-profile cases such as the New York…
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Times' litigation over the Pentagon Papers. “Broadcasters do have considerable First Amendment rights -- a good deal of my career has been devoted to seeking to establish just that -- but ... repeated distortion of information that is broadcast about a forthcoming election is precisely what a broadcaster may not do and that the Commission may consider in determining whether license renewal is appropriate,” said Abrams in informal comments filed with the FCC. Former FCC Chairman Alfred Sikes and former Weekly Standard editor William Kristol are also part of the campaign, which the Media and Democracy Project and former Fox and Disney executive Preston Padden are spearheading. Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, denounced the effort, and the FCC has received letters supporting WTXF from public officials and organizations, including former Undersecretary of the Army Patrick Murphy, the African-American Chamber of Commerce for Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, and the Democratic chairwoman of the city’s delegation to the state House. Padden Thursday also filed comments calling on the agency to include in its record a recent New York State Supreme Court ruling denying Fox’s motion to dismiss a defamation claim from voting machine company Smartmatic. “The Media and Democracy Project petition to deny the license renewal of WTXF-TV is frivolous, completely without merit and asks the FCC to upend the First Amendment and long-standing FCC precedent,” said Fox. “WTXF-TV / FOX 29 News Philadelphia is one of the finest local news stations in the country, broadcasting over 60 hours of local news and locally produced programming every week, and has tremendous broad political and community support.”