The Society of Professional Journalists is “disturbed” by an NPR report that political appointees at the U.S. Agency for Global Media issued a complaint of bias against Voice of America White House bureau chief Steve Herman, said a release Wednesday. “Editorial independence is ‘enshrined’ in the parent agency’s enabling legislation,” said SPJ National President Matthew Hall in the release. “Bureaucrats bound by law and their better angels should not intrude on VOA’s journalism in any way.”

The FCC Enforcement Bureau reached a $15,000 settlement with a low-power FM licensee that violated underwriting rules, ownership rules and restrictions against transferring ownership of an LPFM license within three years of its issue, said an order and consent decree in Tuesday’s Daily Digest. Marconi Broadcasting Foundation -- licensee of WWRI-LP, Coventry, Rhode Island -- underwent a 100% change in its board in 2016, 14 months after the license was issued, the filings said. Marconi Director Chris DiPaola was also serving on Marconi’s board while owner of WBLQ(AM) Westerly, Rhode Island, and WWRI broadcast at least 17 “announcements on behalf of for-profit entities, in exchange for consideration,” over a 16-month period, said the filings. Marconi will follow a five-year compliance plan that includes training on underwriting rules and reporting requirements. It didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Give Fox a permanent waiver of the newspaper/broadcast cross ownership (NBCO) rule for WWOR-TV Secaucus, New Jersey, the company asked the FCC in an undocketed letter posted Tuesday. The permanent waiver would dispel “a cloud of regulatory uncertainty” hanging over the station since the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Prometheus IV ruling resurrected the NBCO rule, Fox said. The station -- which falls under the rule because of Fox’s ownership of the New York Post -- had received a series of such waivers beginning in 2001. In 2018, the FCC renewed WWOR’s license without the waiver because the NBCO was eliminated in 2017. The 2019 Prometheus IV ruling brought the rule back, though the Supreme Court last week granted certiorari in FCC and NAB appeals (see 2010020059). The FCC “has an opportunity to act now to provide immediate relief from a rule that was appropriately repealed and should never have been reinstated,” Fox said. It has a permanent NBCO waiver for WNYW New York, the broadcaster said: The agency has repeatedly found the NBCO rule isn’t in the public interest, but the 3rd Circuit has reinstated it every time.

The FCC rejected four petitions for reconsideration of changes to the FM translator interference rules, as expected (see 2009150061). Tuesday's order on recon denied and dismissed recon petitions from the LPFM (low-power FM) Coalition, broadcaster Fellowship of the Earth, Skywave Communications and Charles Anderson. The petitions argued that the changes were outside FCC authority and attacked a number of aspects, including standards for what constitutes a valid interference complaint and restrictions on the location of such complaints. The LPFM Coalition argues that listeners were disenfranchised by rules not allowing broadcasters to count multiple complaints from the same building toward the complaint minimum. The FCC is unaware of “any court or agency precedent” supporting the coalition's “assertion that the Petition Clause requires the Commission to accept and consider all listener complaints of translator interference,” the order said. "If a ‘real and consistent’ interference problem caused by a translator should occur, we anticipate that the affected station will be able to readily obtain the required minimum number of listener complaints.”

Two members of a three-judge D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel appeared to side Friday with the Open Technology Fund during oral argument on its lawsuit against U.S. Agency for Global Media CEO Michael Pack. The court temporarily stayed Pack’s bid to purge grantee OTF’s leadership in July, which got scrutiny from congressional Democrats (see 2006240054). OTF lawyer Gregory Beck argued the International Broadcasting Act that sets out USAGM’s mandate doesn’t authorize Pack to make the sorts of leadership changes at OTF that he has attempted because the law didn’t specifically create the entity. DOJ lawyer Gerard Sinzdak countered that USAGM’s Radio Free Asia incubated OTF, and the agency then asked Congress to allow it to be spun off, meaning it’s “clearly” an organization Congress had in mind when it wrote the IBA. Judges Merrick Garland and Cornelia Pillard focused at times on OTF’s bylaws and how they set out USAGM’s authority over the nonprofit versus whether the IBA allows USAGM to have the control Pack attempted to assert. Senior Judge David Sentelle appeared to sympathize with USAGM’s argument that OTF’s incubation within Radio Free Asia clearly shows it’s governed by IBA’s mandate. Pack has repeatedly drawn scrutiny from Capitol Hill, including when he defied a House Foreign Affairs Committee subpoena to testify last month (see 2009240060). Six senior USAGM officials recently filed a whistleblower complaint with the State Department’s inspector general and U.S. Office of Special Counsel, claiming they had faced retaliation for noting their concerns with Pack’s abuses of authority.

The “narrow and increasingly inaccurate” way the DOJ Antitrust Division defines broadcast advertising competition prevents beneficial purchases, said the affiliate associations of all four big networks in a joint letter Wednesday. The DOJ’s definition of local advertising competition means it will always view local broadcast markets as highly concentrated and broadcast deals as enhancing market power, the letter said. Allowing more broadcast transactions is the “cure” for declining local news offerings, the affiliate groups said. “The costs of providing local news can be amortized across two stations, and the programming can be offered throughout the daily schedule of each outlet, leading to a substantial increase in output,” the groups said. “Clinging” to an “anachronistic view” of competition has “a deleterious impact on local journalism and programming,” the letter said. DOJ held a workshop on possible changes to its view of broadcast markets in 2019 but hasn't announced any policy changes in that area (see 1905020068).

The FCC should prioritize allowing AM stations to voluntarily go all-digital (see 1911200056), said NAB, Xperi and Hubbard in a call with an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai Friday, per a filing posted Tuesday in docket 19-311. They discussed availability of the HD radio receivers for all-digital AM, Hubbard’s experimental all-digital station, and how the service could be deployed.

Full-power commercial and Class A TV stations can start populating their 2020 children's TV programming reports in the FCC's licensing and management system (LMS), though they won't be able to file them until Jan. 1, said a Media Bureau public notice in Friday's Daily Digest. It said that starting with the 2021 reports, licensees will be able to populate and save in the LMS starting Jan. 1 of the year the report will cover and file Jan. 1 of the following year.

Eliminating broadcast antenna siting rules, approved by the FCC in August (see 2008050064), takes effect Monday, says that day's Federal Register.

E.W. Scripps' proposed $2.65 billion purchase of Ion (see 2009240044) will let New Scripps reach 73% of U.S. TV households without the UHF discount, and 39% with the discount, Scripps emailed us Friday. It said New Scripps will operate 107 stations in 76 markets but didn't specify what 23 stations are to be sold. The buyer also won't yet identify the acquirer of those outlets that are being shed. Thirty-nine percent is the current FCC limit on the portion of TV households one company can reach through its stations.