Texas Senator Ted Cruz has announced his intent to introduce legislation intended to block entities associated with the Chinese government from using broadcast licenses to air their propaganda on stations licensed to Canada and Mexico.
Targeted at H&H USA’s “URadio 690” XEWW Tijuana, which is airing Mandarin programming focused at Southern California and the Los Angeles market in particular, the bill would revise Section 325(c) and (d) of the 1934 Communications Act by prohibiting the FCC from issuing licenses to broadcast applicants who intend to change the language of the station they are purchasing, unless the FCC can certify that the programming of the station will never be influenced by a foreign government or governing party. H&H USA is reportedly connected to Phoenix Satellite Television, an arm of the Chinese Communist Party. A subsidiary of Phoenix Satellite Television previously attempted to purchase KDAY Redondo Beach/Los Angeles and KDEY Ontario/Riverside in 2013.
Section 325(c) and (d) currently state:
No person shall be permitted to locate, use, or maintain a radio broadcast studio or other place or apparatus from which or whereby sound waves are converted into electrical energy, or mechanical or physical reproduction of sound waves produced, and caused to be transmitted or delivered to a radio station in a foreign country for the purpose of being broadcast from any radio station there having a power output of sufficient intensity and/or being so located geographically that its emissions may be received consistently in the United States, without first obtaining a permit from the Commission upon proper application therefor.”
325(d) states,”Such application shall contain such information as the Commission may by regulation prescribe, and the granting or refusal thereof shall be subject to the requirements of section 309 of this title with respect to applications for station licenses or renewal or modification thereof, and the license or permission so granted shall be revocable for false statements in the application so required or when the Commission, after hearings, shall find its continuation no longer in the public interest.
Cruz’s revision would append the following at the end 325(d), “The Commission may not grant such an application for the transfer of a permit described in subsection (c) that proposes a change in the primary language in which programming by a radio station described in that subsection will be broadcast, unless the Commission separately certifies to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate and the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives that, in the judgment of the Commission, and in addition to the requirements and prohibitions under section 310, the programming of the radio station is not, and will not become, subject to undue influence by a foreign government or a political party in power in a foreign country.”
The revisions would force the FCC to get into to business of overseeing programming on stations, albeit just those that are licensed to other countries whose programming is heard in the United States. XEWW has currently been operating via STA from the FCC while awaiting a final decision.
Jaime Bonilla Valdez, the governor of Baja California, is the licensee of multiple stations in Tijuana, including two that were previously brokered to Broadcast Company of the Americas to serve English audiences in San Diego. Would he be considered a foreign government agent preventing his stations from being leased to American audiences?
Cruz’s argument is based around trying to stop foreign propaganda from being aired. The FCC itself states, “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 previously, the Commission generally will not intervene in these cases because it would be inconsistent with the First Amendment to replace the journalistic judgment of licensees with our own.” This is why Cruz is not going after stations licensed within the country, but using the loophole of targeting just stations licensed elsewhere to prevent XEWW from continuing to operate. The bill serves such a narrow focus on stopping one station because that’s all Cruz can act on.
