Jeffrey Westling on FCC “News Distortion” Policy and Pressure on Broadcasters
Jeffrey Westling, ICLE Senior Scholar for Innovation Policy, was quoted in a Wyoming Star article on how the FCC’s “news distortion” policy creates pressure on broadcasters through its licensing power, even when it isn’t directly enforced. Read the full article here.
In responses to Wyoming Star, Jeff Westling, senior scholar of innovation policy at the International Center for Law & Economics, argued that the danger lies precisely in the policy’s legal ambiguity. The group said the FCC’s authority over broadcasters remains broad enough to create practical pressure even where an actual legal violation would be hard to prove.
That matters even more in a media environment where political pressure rarely arrives through one channel alone. Jeff Westling described the policy itself as only one piece of a wider ecosystem of influence.
Today, consumers can obtain content through a wide range of options such as cable television and digital platforms, and the barriers to communication have never been lower. If challenged, I think a lot of the FCC’s authority to regulate broadcasters will be diminished in favor of strong First Amendment protections for the broadcasters,” Jeff Westling said.
Jeff Westling argues that the cleanest solution would not be to fine-tune the doctrine but to remove the underlying authority that makes it possible.