FCC Defends Broadcast Foreign-Ownership Disclosure Rule in Federal Court

The Federal Communications Commission is defending its decision to make broadcasters do some extra due diligence in identifying foreign leased programming, a decision that came amid concerns about foreign disinformation in U.S. media.

Calling it a minimal extension of its longstanding regulations regarding foreign programming sponsorship, the FCC told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit it should not block that rule extension. The National Association of Broadcasters and others asked the court to do so in the form of a motion to stay the rule.

The FCC said broadcasters beef is with a single straightforward administrative requirement that stations perform a name search on two government websites in order to confirm that the party to whom a broadcaster leases airtime is not a foreign governmental entity.

There is a high bar for a judicial stay, including imminent and irreparable harm absent such a stay and likelihood of the success of NABs case. The FCC said it will likely take several months for the new rule to take effect, because the Office of Management and Budget must sign off on the information collection obligations. The FCC said NAB has not shown that the rule, when it does go into effect, will cause irreparable harm. It rejects the NAB s claim that unrecoverable compliance costs if the rule goes into effect and the court later overturns the compliance requirement are irreparable harm because the economic hit isn t that big.

The NAB also said a stay would cause irreparable harm because it would run afoul of the First Amendment. The FCC said the disclosure requirement burdens speech, but does not prevent it; said it is narrowly tailored, as any speech regulations must be; and noted that the Supreme Court has said broadcasters have the most limited speech protections of all forms of communications.

LINK:	https://www.nexttv.com/news/fcc-defends-broadcast-foreign-ownership-di...
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