About the Author
Dan is the Managing Member of Heuristic Management, LLC, a private sector and capital markets strategic advisory firm for agricultural and economic development, strategic marketing, and public/private partnerships in emerging and frontier states. He has served as a Senior Partnerships Advisor to the Office of Markets and Partnership Innovations in the Bureau for Food Security at USAID. He co-created the Feed the Future Public-Private Partnership Opportunity Explorer. He is a founding member of the Tufts Nutrition Council, an advisor to Iowa State University’s Global Food Security Consortium, and Universities Fighting World Hunger at Auburn University. He is a member of the Advisory Council of The Hillwood Estate, Museum, and Gardens in Wahington, DC.
Who Is Regulating the Media?
During the 1960s and ‘70s in the U.S., Walter Cronkite was the anchorman of the CBS Evening News. An opinion poll credited him with being “the most trusted man in America”, which became his legacy. That moment has passed.
This week, Rupert Murdock, the head of the Fox Corporation, admitted under oath that senior members of the Fox News staff willfully lied about facts concerning Don Trump’s allegations of voter fraud.
I want to know who is going to prosecute the dissolution of the Fox News Network by charging each station that carried programming that included lies about the election with having violated regulations in The Communications Act which oversees the licensing of radio and TV stations.
Here are excerpts from The Communications Act:
As mentioned earlier, we expect station licensees to be aware of the important News Distortion. The Commission often receives complaints concerning broadcast journalism, such as allegations that stations have aired inaccurate or one-sided news reports or comments, covered stories inadequately, or overly dramatized the events that they cover.
For the reasons noted previously, the Commission generally will not intervene in these cases because it would be inconsistent with the First Amendment to replace the journalistic judgment of licensees with our own.
However, as public trustees, broadcast licensees may not intentionally distort the news. The FCC has stated that “rigging or slanting the news is a most heinous act against the public interest.”
The Commission will investigate a station for news distortion if it receives documented evidence of rigging or slanting, such as testimony or other documentation, from individuals with direct personal knowledge that a licensee or its management engaged in the intentional falsification of the news. Of particular concern would be evidence of the direction to employees from station management to falsify the news.
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It could be argued that Fox-owned stations also violated guidelines established for perpetrating hoaxes, to wit:
The broadcast by a station of false information concerning a crime or catastrophe violates the FCC’s rules if:
* The station licensee knew that the information was false;
* Broadcasting the false information directly causes substantial public harm; and
* It was foreseeable that broadcasting the false information would cause such harm.
In this context, a “crime” is an act or omission that makes the offender subject to criminal punishment by law, and a “catastrophe” is a disaster or an imminent disaster involving violent or sudden events affecting the public.
The broadcast must cause direct and actual damage to property or to the health or safety of the general public, or diversion of law enforcement or other public health and safety authorities from their duties, and the public harm must begin immediately.
If a station airs a disclaimer before the broadcast that clearly characterizes the program as fiction and the disclaimer is presented in a reasonable manner under the circumstances, the program is presumed not to pose foreseeable public harm.
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Why hasn’t the Commissioner of the FCC said anything publicly? Will the Justice Department investigate? What is the personal responsibility of each Fox employee who participated in spreading lies?