PHOENIX — Senate President Warren Petersen is asking the Federal Communications Commission to investigate KAET-TV, the Phoenix PBS affiliate, with an eye on revocation the station’s license.
In a letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, the Gilbert Republican said the station acted improperly in its 2022 decision to give a half-hour interview to Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Katie Hobbs after she refused to debate GOP foe Kari Lake. That, he said, violated the agreement KAET had with the Citizens Clean Elections Commission to deny such an opportunity to those who would not face their foes.
Lake also was given an opportunity for a 30-minute interview with Ted Simons, who hosts the station’s public affairs program. But she refused after hearing that KAET was giving Hobbs an interview despite her refusing to participate in the debate — what was required under the Clean Elections rules.
What makes matters worse, Petersen said, is documents unearthed by local media found that ASU President Michael Crow was involved at least indirectly with the decision to give airtime to Hobbs — without a debate requirement — at one point talking about the “election denier issue.”
That referred to the fact Lake was campaigning for governor on the false claim Donald Trump had outpolled Joe Biden in Arizona in the 2020 presidential race despite official results and several lawsuits confirming the outcome.
And it also found Mi-Ah Parrish, who headed ASU’s media enterprise operations, told the head of the Clean Elections Commission that putting “a person on television with those views was wrong.”
All that, Petersen contends, is illegal.
In his letter to Carr, the Senate president, who also is running for attorney general, cited a 1998 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said a broadcaster “cannot grant or deny access to a candidate debate on the basis of whether it agrees with a candidate’s views,” with the court saying such viewpoint discrimination would present “an inevitability of skewing the electoral dialog.”
And he said internal emails showed university officials were convinced Hobbs would win, even after refusing to debate Lake.
In the end, Hobbs won by 17,116 votes out of nearly 2.6 million votes cast.
“Based on emails between top university officials, Arizona PBS made broadcast decisions based on how it viewed Kari Lake’s positions on election integrity and Katie Hobbs’ electoral prospects,” Petersen wrote.
“The FCC should investigate Arizona PBS’ blatant viewpoint discrimination against Kari Lake and partisan calculations designed to benefit Katie Hobbs,” he said. Petersen said he is seeking “appropriate enforcement action, including license revocation, to protect the public interest and ensure that Arizonans will not be subjected to biased media manipulation in the future.”
A spokesman for Scott Woelful, who is the station manager, said there would be no comment. The same response came from ASU Vice President Jay Thorne.
Whether there will be a repeat of all this in 2026 remains unclear. Hobbs has declined to say whether she will debate whoever survives the Republican primary race between Andy Biggs and Karrin Taylor Robson.
Howard Fischer
Mr. Fischer, a longtime award-winning Arizona journalist, is founder and operator of Capitol Media Services.