The NAB; Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC); and the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB) late Friday filed a petition with the FCC demanding a stay of the Commission’s order mandating disclosures for foreign government-sponsored programming.
The groups also want the FCC to delay implementation of its order until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rules on a petition for review they’ve just filed, which challenges the order.
The Stay Request, tied to MB Docket No. 20-299, the “Sponsorship Identification Requirements for Foreign Government-Provided Programming,” offers some bold opinions.
For one, the “Petitioners are likely to prevail on the Merits.”
How so? “The Order’s Independent Investigation Requirements Violate Section 317(c) of the Communications Act,” the petitioners claim.
Then, there is the argument that the Order is “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act, and that “the Order compels speech” in stating, “The Order’s Coercion of Investigation and Public Speech Is Not Narrowly Tailored to Serve a Sufficiently Important Government Interest and thus Violates the First Amendment.”
Assisting the groups on the petition is Stephen Kinnaird, of Paul Hastings LLP.
A concurrent filing of the PFR with the D.C. circuit was done by Kinnaird. In that filing, the petitioners also share how “the Commission adopted unnecessary and overly burdensome
rules that violate the Communications Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, and
the First Amendment.”
Kinnaird, writing for the NAB, MMTC and NABOB, notes, “The new rules impose on every broadcaster—i.e., thousands of stations, some very small, which collectively have many thousands of contracts for the lease of time to air programming—onerous requirements to make specified inquiries of, and conduct independent research on, all the entities with whom broadcasters currently or will in the future have lease agreements. The broadcaster
must determine (and then announce) whether the sponsor of the programming is a
foreign governmental entity or its agent, even if the leased programming (such as
an infomercial or local religious broadcast) poses no colorable risk of foreign
sponsorship. Broadcasters must conduct those multi-stage inquiries and
investigations at the time any lease is initially entered into and repeat them every
time that same lease (with the same, already-investigated party) is renewed.”
Stations also must memorialize those inquiries and investigations and maintain that
documentation.
Kinnaird continues, “Those regulations are imposed only upon broadcasters, even
though the problem that the Commission purports to address—the failure to
identify a foreign government entity that is the source of the programming—is
almost entirely associated with satellite and cable channels and, above all, with
social media and the Internet.”
In a joint statement, the groups say, “NAB, MMTC and NABOB are deeply concerned with the FCC’s misguided attempt to develop uniform rules for disclosing foreign government-sponsored programming. The Commission’s decision to require broadcasters in all circumstances to investigate the source of leased programming exceeds its statutory authority, is arbitrary and capricious and violates the First Amendment. Broadcasters strongly oppose foreign interference in American elections, but the Commission’s order fails to even address this core objective. We look forward to presenting our case in court.”
