A Washington-based ethics watchdog is calling on federal regulators to revoke News Corporation's 27 Fox broadcast licenses in the wake of the highly critical report on phone hacking from the UK parliament.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) has written to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, calling on the regulator to pull the plug on Rupert Murdoch's lucrative television licenses on grounds of character.
The letter argues that the final report of the UK Commons culture, media and sport committee, which concluded that Murdoch was not fit to run a major international company, had implications for the US regulators that they had now to act upon.
Melanie Sloan, Crew's director, said that the Murdochs had clearly failed the character test that is embedded within US media law as it is within British. "If they are not passing the character standard under British law, it seems to me that they are not going to meet the character standard in America."
In their report, the British parliamentarians found Rupert Murdoch was "not a fit person" to exercise stewardship of a major international company. The Commons culture, media and sport select committee also concluded that James Murdoch showed "willful ignorance" of the extent of phone hacking during 2009 and 2010.
Under FCC regulations, broadcast frequencies can only be handed to firms run by people of good "character" who serve the "public interest" and speak with "candor". In making that judgment, the FCC is entitled to consider past conduct of media owners, including conduct that does not relate directly to their broadcasting interests, as well as any patterns of alleged misbehavior.
The FCC has so far shown an unwillingness to be drawn into the billowing phone hacking scandal concerning the News of the World and other News Corporation outlets in the UK. Last July, Genachowski indicated that he did not expect his agency to get involved in the probe.
But Crew insisted that as more information emerges about the failure of News Corp to deal with its hacking crisis, federal authorities would eventually be forced to act. The watchdog has also written to the US Senate and House committees on commerce calling for congressional hearings into whether the Murdochs were fit to hold the Fox TV licenses. A similar request from Crew last year went unanswered.
This is by NO means a done deal, but considering how the Obama administration, and the other news agencies, view Fox News, it would not be totally surprising if these calls for removing the Murdock taint from journalism in this country, in an attempt to bring back the high standards it once enjoyed before it was infected with the cancer of Fox New, don't find sympathetic ears here in the United States.
And how awesome would it be if we could FINALLY have a country where the poisonous lies dripping from the fangs of the Fox News "journalists" did not inject themselves into our political dialogue and negatively impact our ability to separate fact from fabrication?
Not to mention the fact that without Fox News, there would be NOBODY willing to broadcast the wilted word salad of a certain Lunatic from Lake Lucille into our living rooms.
THAT alone should be enough reason for the FCC to act on CREWS request.
