Neoconservative pundit-turned-Never Trumper Bill Kristol wants the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to drop the proverbial hammer on Fox News (FNC) following its landmark settlement with Dominion Voting Systems.
FNC and its parent company Fox Corporation reached an 11th-hour deal with the voting machine company to avoid a high-stakes defamation trial. Fox Corp. acknowledged in a statement “the court's rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.”
The $787.5 million settlement didn't require Fox to issue a formal apology to Dominion.
For Kristol, that wasn't good enough. In a statement, the co-founder of The Weekly Standard – who spent a decade on-air at Fox News – urged the FCC to begin rejecting the broadcast license renewal of Fox affiliate stations. (RELATED: Fox News, Dominion Voting Systems Break Silence On Tucker Carlson Ouster)
Kristol's first target is FOX 29, a local Philadelphia station owned by Fox Corp. The longtime Republican filed a complaint with former FCC Commissioner and former PBS President Ervin Duggan, former News Corp. executive Boulder Preston and the Media and Democracy Project (MAD) objecting to the Fox affiliate's license renewal in light of the Dominion adjudication.
The Daily Beast reports:
The informal objection, which is co-signed by former PBS President Ervin Duggan, follows the formal petition to deny FOX 29 Philadelphia a license that the non-partisan Media and Democracy Project (MAD) filed with the FCC earlier this month. In what it described as a “landmark” bid, MAD cited Dominion Voting System's defamation lawsuit against Fox as proof that the company broadcast “false news about the 2020 election” and, therefore, breached the FCC's policy on licensee character qualifications.
Now an editor-at-large with the anti-Trump conservative outlet The Bulwark, Kristol said in the objection that while he and Duggan came from different political parties—Duggan served in the Johnson administration—they both believe that open and actual debate is key to American democracy.
The pair added that they “believe that media companies who are directly or indirectly granted the privilege to serve the public through the operation of FCC-licensed television stations have a corollary duty to facilitate and strengthen democracy by participating in that debate—not by hiding their opinions, nor by providing ‘equal time' on all issues to outside parties, nor by merely chasing ratings or corporate stock price, but by adhering to the highest journalistic standards in reporting and distributing news to ensure that the public has solid facts upon which to make the decisions that are essential to our society's future as a democracy.”
Kristol, who held senior positions in both the Reagan and Bush administrations, also took Fox's ownership to task for allowing lies about the 2020 presidential election to be broadcast on their networks.
Before Fox's last-minute settlement, Judge Eric Davis ruled in Dominion's favor on several vital points, including that the election tech company proved multiple statements about its practices on FNC shows were false and defamatory.
Electronic voting systems company Smartmatic is also pursuing a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News.
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So Fox is sold to CBS NBC etc???
Kristol is an irrelevent windbag and you’re seriously promoting THE DAILY BEAST? Too lazy to write your own material?
Super Sour Grapes…bleh
EFF him in his biden!
The brothers have turned Fox to trash that needs to be gone.