It’s a new year, and as has been our custom at the beginning of each year, we dust off the crystal ball and take a look at what we think may be some of the significant regulatory and legislative issues that broadcasters will be facing in 2025.  This year, there is an extra layer of uncertainty given a new administration, both in the White House and at the FCC.  Already, it appears that a new administration will bring new priorities – some barely on the radar in past years – to the top of the list of the issues that broadcasters will need to be carefully monitoring.

One of those issues has been a possible FCC review of the meaning of the “public interest” standard under which all broadcasters are governed.  As we wrote when President-Elect Trump announced his pick for the new FCC Chair starting on Inauguration Day, Chair-Designate Brendan Carr has indicated that this public interest proceeding will be a high priority.  In his opinion, broadcasters, or perhaps more specifically the news media, have suffered from an erosion of trust, and it has been his expressed opinion that a reexamination of the public interest standard might help to restore public trust.  We noted in our article upon his selection that this is not the first time that there has been a re-examination of that standard.  It has traditionally been difficult to precisely define what the standard means.  In the coming days, we will be writing more about this issue.  But suffice it to say that we are hopeful that any new examination does not lead to more paperwork obligations for broadcasters, as seemingly occurred whenever any broadcast issue was addressed by the current administration.  As we note below, there are several paperwork burdens that we think may disappear in the new administration, so we are not expecting more paper – but we will all need to be carefully watching what develops from any re-examination of the public interest standard.Continue Reading Looking Into the Crystal Ball – What Legal and Policy Issues are Ahead for Broadcasters in 2025?

Recently, FCC staff dismissed a request by the organization Free Press asking the FCC to investigate the broadcast of the President’s press conferences on the coronavirus and programs where commentators supported the President’s pronouncements.  In addition to an investigation, the request asked that the FCC require that broadcasters “prominently disclose when information they air is false or scientifically suspect” in relation to these press conferences and other broadcasts.   Free Press suggested that the FCC had the authority to take this action under its broad mandate to regulate in the public interest.  It also cited the FCC’s hoax rule as providing support for such an action.  As we have written before, the hoax rule is designed to prevent broadcasts that pose the risk of imminent harm to the public by potentially tying up first responders and emergency response teams for purported disasters and crimes that are not real.  FCC staff dismissed the Free Press complaint, finding that the FCC is forbidden by Section 326 of the Communications Act from censoring the speech of broadcasters or otherwise abridging their freedom of speech.  These First Amendment principles largely keep the FCC out of content regulation (with the limited exceptions of regulation in areas like indecency, obscenity and sponsorship identification where the message is not being censored, just certain means of expression).

In the Free Press decision, the FCC concluded that, in covering a breaking news story like the pandemic, it would be impossible for a broadcaster to fact check every statement made in a press conference and correct any misstatements in anything approaching real time, as there is so much room for interpretation of any statement made on these ongoing matters.  It would also be impossible for the FCC to police any such mandate without trampling on First Amendment principles, as it would require the FCC to become the arbiter of the truth for many claims made on television.  The FCC declined to take on that role, and noted that the hoax rule is narrowly drawn to avoid these First Amendment issues.  That rule only punishes clearly false broadcasts that could foreseeably tie up first responders or cause substantial public harm.  It does not get the FCC involved in evaluations of the truth of political statements and policy pronouncements.  This is a position that has consistently been taken by the FCC, and one that we often see misstated in connection with demands for the take-down of issue advertising and non-candidate political attack ads.
Continue Reading FCC Denies Application of Hoax Rule to Trump Press Conferences on COVID-19 – Looking at the First Amendment and the Commission’s Regulation of Political Speech