Last July, we noted how media reform activists had petitioned the FCC to revoke Fox News’ local broadcast license in Philadelphia. More specifically, the group argued that Fox News’ rampant election fraud propaganda technically violated the “character clause” embedded in the Communications Act the FCC is supposed to use to determine whether an organization should hold a broadcast license.
To be clear, a single Fox broadcast affiliate losing its license to broadcast in Philly wouldn’t have much of an impact on Fox’s ongoing efforts to spew GOP propaganda nationwide.
But, if successful, it might be replicable in other markets. Even if not, it serves a useful function in terms of activism and gaining media exposure for the need for some flavor of regulatory reform (like restoring popular, bipartisan media consolidation limits stripped away by the Trump FCC, media antitrust reform, or having the FCC actually use its authority to ensure economic and racial diversity ownership in media).
I’ve been hearing a lot of Neville Chamberlains decrying every action to hold Republicans accountable or establish rules to curtail bad behavior as widening the divide, but I’ve yet to see any attempts to bridge that gap(by the Left) have any positive effect, much less get reciprocated.
They don’t care about fairness, or law, or compromise. They only want more, and if you don’t establish boundaries, they’ll keep taking more.
I agree, it has been shown that decoupling people from their source of propaganda can deradicalize (some of) them. So yes they’ll be angry for a while, but it’ll be good in the long run.