Sunday, March 8, 2015

FCC PETITIONED TO REMOVE FOX NEWS’ BROADCASTING LICENSE: HAVE YOU SIGNED?


ople are tired of the lies and deceit of Fox News.  The right-wing propaganda mill that has been rated truthful only 11% of the time has managed to dominate the cable news ratings without offering a shred of anything newsworthy for years.
Rodney Latstetter of Caledonia, IL has decided he’s had enough.  His idea, to bring the concerns of Americans tired of hearing the rhetoric to the FCC, has sparked a petition on Change.org that everyone opposed to deception reported as news should read and sign.
The petition states:

We feel that Fox News does and willfully distort (sic) the news in a manner detrimental to the United States and it’s (sic) citizens and is done with malice and forethought .

This isn’t a simple petition stating “we don’t like Fox News,” it’s a well thought out and articulate message to the FCC that not only does Fox broadcast lies with malice and forethought, it breaks several rules laid out by the FCC for broadcast journalism:
  • Hoaxes –  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.

Months after both the House and Senate cleared the Obama administration of any wrongdoing or deceit over Benghazi, Fox still regularly fills space with more conspiracy theories and lies about the incident, often times referring to specific talking points refuted by the GOP-led congress’ own reports.
  • 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 above, the Commission generally will not intervene in such 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.
There are far too many instances of Fox distorting the news to mention.  It’s a daily occurrence.
Many will wonder if such a petition could possibly do any good.  The answer is yes.  The White House will review any petition that receives 100,000 signatures, and the FCC falls under the purview of the Executive Branch.
Change.org petitions were successful in reversing a decision by Verizon to turn off the phones of abuse victims due to lack of payment and responsible for the first female moderator in a Presidential debate in over 20 years.
The petition may work, or it may not.  For me, it felt good to sign it one way or the other.

Sign the petition to have Fox News’ broadcast license revoked 

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