MEDIAGPT | U.S. BROADCAST REGULATION
First early license review in more than 50 years targets eight owned stations; 153,000 comments filed, replies due August 5
The argument that a broadcast license is being used to adjust program content now sits in a formal filing from the largest U.S. broadcast network. ABC submitted a 109-page opposition to the Federal Communications Commission late on July 29 local time, made public July 30, asking the agency to dismiss the early license renewal proceedings against its eight owned-and-operated stations.
Jung Han
The filing states that each of the eight stations is owned by ABC and that the administration has openly and repeatedly called for revocation of ABC’s licenses because it dislikes the content and viewpoints expressed on the network’s programs. The FCC had not invoked early license review in more than 50 years.
U.S. broadcast licenses run on eight-year renewal terms, and a licensee must demonstrate at renewal that it has served the public interest. Discretion over when a review begins and how far it reaches sits with the Commission. The FCC licenses local stations, not networks. Networks own their highest-value big-market stations directly as O&Os, while roughly 200 additional markets are covered by affiliates. Pulling all eight owned stations into review at once puts pressure on the network’s revenue base and its programming decisions at the same time. Accelerating that review ahead of expiry — using the gap between an eight-year license cycle and a four-year political cycle — is the part that has no precedent.
The rule the early review rests on, and the renewal standard
The Video Division of the FCC’s Media Bureau issued an order on April 28 (DA 26-416) directing The Walt Disney Company, ABC and its subsidiaries to file renewals for all their licensed TV stations. A public notice on May 29 (DA 26-541) opened MB Docket No. 26-131. The authority for calling licenses in early is 47 CFR § 73.3539, which lets the Commission require renewal applications before expiry when it determines that doing so is essential to the proper conduct of an investigation.
The renewal standard sits in Section 309(k)(1) of the Communications Act: whether the station served the public interest during the preceding term, whether there were serious violations, and whether other violations taken together amount to a pattern of abuse. A licensee that falls short can be denied after notice and hearing, or renewed on conditions and for a term shorter than the maximum. The notice also cites the character qualification a licensee must maintain as a trustee of the public airwaves.
The underlying investigation concerns whether hiring, promotion, compensation and workplace opportunity decisions turned on race, gender or other protected characteristics. The eight stations under review are WABC-TV (New York), KABC-TV (Los Angeles), WLS-TV (Chicago), WPVI-TV (Philadelphia), KTRK-TV (Houston), KGO-TV (San Francisco), WTVD (Durham) and KFSN-TV (Fresno). Petitions to deny were due June 29, oppositions July 29 and replies August 5.
Licenses two to five years from expiry, called in early
The licenses were originally set to expire between 2028 and 2031. Disney filed the renewal applications on May 28 under protest, describing the order as unlawful, arbitrary and unconstitutional. Losing the licenses would force ABC’s largest stations off the air and collapse the network’s reach.
In the filing, ABC argues the Commission has spent 18 months searching for a pretext to revoke the licenses and has found none, because the stations meet the renewal standard. The network also argues the damage is already done even if the licenses survive: the investigation and the threat of an adverse finding are themselves the penalty, a point the filing makes by invoking the sword of Damocles — its value lies in hanging, not in dropping. Denying renewal over disfavored programming, ABC adds, is the censorship that Section 326 of the Communications Act forbids.
The petitions seeking denial came from the Center for American Rights, the Media Research Center and the Article III Project. ABC responds that they lack standing as local viewers, failed to follow service rules, and rest on claims about partisan bias and equal employment practices that the agency has no authority to sanction. Daniel Suhr, president of the Center for American Rights, argued in a 66-page petition that ABC’s rights are not preeminent and that the Commission should focus on viewers’ rights; in a July 30 statement he said the public airwaves are not Disney’s property and an FCC license is not a corporate entitlement, calling for the applications to be designated for hearing.
A proceeding opened one day after the Kimmel monologue
The two sides differ on why the timing looks the way it does. ABC’s filing lays out the sequence: late-night host Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about President Trump’s health and First Lady Melania Trump, the President publicly attacked the network, and the FCC ordered early renewal for the eight stations the following day. The filing also cites a warning from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr last fall that ABC should take action on Kimmel or face additional work at the agency.
The FCC has maintained the action grew out of an inquiry into Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs, opened early last year to determine whether they violated federal anti-discrimination law. In a July 30 statement, an FCC spokesperson said broadcasters have been given free use of a valuable public resource for decades and are required by law to operate in the public interest rather than in partisan interests, adding that the agency will hold broadcasters accountable to the full extent of the law regardless of any disinformation campaign a licensee may choose to run.
Carr has also said ABC’s decision not to carry President Trump’s prime-time address in mid-July live could factor into the review. NBC also did not air the address.
153,000 comments and an on-air campaign
Since last month ABC has run spots in the eight markets under review urging viewers to use their voice and file comments with the FCC, with a QR code linking directly to the agency’s site. A separate spot asked viewers to support “The View,” which faces its own FCC proceeding.
By the July 29 night deadline, more than 153,000 comments had been filed — against the few hundred typical of other open proceedings. By the company’s count, roughly 96 percent backed their local ABC station, and more than 140,000 came from the stations’ own communities, including individual viewers along with local police and firefighters, charities, businesses and schools.
Among those filing were Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. Luna wrote that KABC, on the air in Los Angeles for more than 75 years, has delivered information to residents that saved lives. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representatives Ted Lieu, Laura Friedman, Maxine Waters and Ro Khanna have called on the FCC to drop the review, saying the agency politicized its regulatory powers. Comments opposing ABC were also filed.
ABC notes in the filing that it used Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s Codex to evaluate the comment record, with human reviewers checking a random sample for accuracy. It is a rare instance of a licensee documenting generative AI use in evidence handling inside a regulatory submission.
“The View” and the equal opportunities question
Separately from the license review, the FCC is examining whether “The View” should keep the news-program exemption from equal opportunities rules that it was granted in 2002. ABC responded to that proceeding earlier this month. In the new filing it argues the Commission now appears poised to conclude that the program must offer equal opportunities to every legally qualified candidate if it interviews one, a result the network says would reverse decades of agency precedent.
A larger legal team, with the Supreme Court in view
Disney has assembled a team led by Horacio Gutierrez, its chief legal and global affairs officer. It includes Beth Wilkinson, the trial lawyer who successfully defended Microsoft’s 2023 acquisition of Activision, along with Jennifer Tatel and Paul Clement, a former U.S. solicitor general with extensive Supreme Court experience. Wilkinson is also defending Paramount in the antitrust suit brought by 12 states over its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The company is treating the case as one that could ultimately reach the Supreme Court.
Former regulators have weighed in as well. Ex-chairmen and senior officials who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations — among them Mark Fowler, Dennis Patrick, Alfred Sikes and Tom Wheeler — filed comments on July 28 describing the proceeding as an assault on free speech disguised as regulatory process. The ACLU, the National Coalition Against Censorship and the Knight First Amendment Institute filed a joint comment on July 29, and a coalition of progressive groups wrote to Disney Chief Executive Josh D’Amaro urging the company to keep defending First Amendment protections.
What the three-member Commission does next
Replies are due August 5. The FCC currently seats three commissioners: Carr and Olivia Trusty on the Republican side, and Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat. The Commission can grant or deny the renewal applications, designate them for hearing, or renew on conditions and for a shortened term. A determination is expected next month. The eight licenses remain in effect while the proceeding runs.
Gomez said in a July 30 statement that the FCC has no authority to police the ideological balance of the airwaves and that the record leaves no doubt this was never a genuine search for the public interest. Congress restricts the agency from regulatory moves that infringe broadcasters’ free speech rights.
What this means for Korean players
In Korea, terrestrial broadcasters, general programming channels and news channels go through a re-approval review every three to five years. The Korea Media and Communications Commission (방송미디어통신위원회) scores them and attaches conditions. Broadcasting law states that programming freedom and independence are guaranteed, yet public responsibility and fairness survive on the scoresheet as weighted line items.
That means a channel through which judgments about programming feed into whether a license continues is permanently open inside the system. What is happening in the United States shows how far that channel can be widened when an administration wants it widened. Korea faces a slightly different question: how long should an approval the state has already granted remain in force?
The prohibition existed, and it did not hold
Section 326 of the U.S. Communications Act expressly bars the FCC from censorship or from interfering with free speech. ABC argued in its 109-page opposition that refusing renewal over programming violates Section 326; four former chairmen who led the agency under both Republican and Democratic administrations called the proceeding an attack on speech dressed as regulation; and Commissioner Gomez stated flatly that the Commission has no authority to police the ideological balance of the airwaves. The eight licenses were pulled onto the review table anyway, two to five years before expiry. A prohibition written on paper does not by itself guarantee restraint by the regulator.
Intervention always arrives under another name
The FCC’s stated grounds were not programming but equal employment practices and an investigation into Disney’s DEI policies, and the trigger was a procedural rule, 47 CFR § 73.3539. That the proceeding opened the day after Kimmel’s monologue is what raised doubt about the substance. In Korea, too, judgments about programming and editorial line arrive translated into public-responsibility points and into assessments of a controlling shareholder’s fitness. The legitimacy of a regulatory process is settled less by the text of the rule than by the context in which it is invoked.
Korea’s version of the question — YTN
On February 7, 2024, the Korea Communications Commission (방송통신위원회), then seated with only Kim Hong-il and Lee Sang-in, approved Yujin ENT (유진이엔티) as the largest shareholder of YTN. Three of the five commissioner seats were vacant, and the legitimacy of that composition was contested from the day of the vote. At the same time, the acquirer went through the statutory review, received an approval carrying ten conditions, paid 319.9 billion won, and has run the company for more than two years. Both of those things are true. What makes the case hard is not that one side is plainly wrong, but that two values worth protecting collide head-on.
What the court decided, and what remains unsettled
On November 28, 2025, the Seoul Administrative Court (서울행정법원), Division 3 under presiding judge Choi Su-jin, granted the employee stock ownership association’s claim and annulled the approval. The court held that a commission created to safeguard broadcasting freedom, public purpose and independence must have at least three members seated for major decisions. The principle that a collegial body cannot function without genuine collegiality is sound on its own terms and sets a standard for how a broadcast regulator must be constituted.
On the same day, however, the Seoul High Court reached a different conclusion. In MBC’s suit challenging a sanction over its PD Notebook report on exclusion from the presidential aircraft, the High Court read “sitting members” by the letter of the statute — those holding office at the time of the vote — and found a two-member vote not procedurally unlawful. More than ten merits cases at the first and second instance turn on the same two-member question, and the rulings diverge. That higher-court reading is what Yujin ENT relied on when it appealed to the Seoul High Court on December 4; the first hearing is set for August 28. The government did not appeal. The validity of two-member votes is being worked out inside the judiciary right now, and it is settled in neither direction.
What Yujin is not responsible for should be separated out
What the court faulted was the composition of the body that issued the decision, not the conduct of the acquirer. Nothing in the judgment finds that Yujin ENT submitted false material or failed the review criteria. The acquirer’s own framing — that the issue is not the buyer or the price but the two-member structure of the commission — points at the same place. The defect in the regulator’s composition was the state’s doing, and the acquirer executed the transaction in reliance on the approval the state issued. Even if the approval is reconsidered, fault attributable to the acquirer and fault attributable to the state have to be distinguished, and that distinction should carry through to any discussion of divestment or who absorbs the loss. An outcome that places the entire cost of restoring procedural legitimacy on the party that had no part in the procedure does not serve the purpose of restoring it.
An approval that can be undone is not an approval
The concern on the other side is equally real. If a precedent forms in which an acquirer that obtained regulatory approval and paid the price loses that position to an administrative judgment after a change of government, the precedent will not stop at YTN. Capital considering a stake in a broadcaster will price political risk that persists past approval, and whether the next government will honor it becomes the first item in diligence. In a market that has been debating loosened ownership rules and fresh capital, weakening the finality of approvals undercuts the premise of that debate. Neither the protection of settled expectations nor procedural legitimacy can be declared to win outright, which is precisely why this judgment belongs with the courts rather than with administrative discretion.
Delay is itself the cost
The contrast is sharp. ABC met the regulator head-on with 153,000 comments and a litigation bench, and its eight licenses remain in effect while the proceeding runs. At YTN, ownership itself is in dispute, staff have answered with strikes and lawsuits, and eight months after the first-instance ruling there is still no conclusion. The YTN union chapter held its ninth strike rally on June 25 and began a relay of 108 prostrations outside the commission on July 29. Roughly 740 employees are waiting. Both the controlling shareholder and the staff pay for the delay. That procedural delay is itself a burden imposed on a broadcaster is the same point ABC made by invoking the sword of Damocles.
A regulator that stepped back on its own
At the 23rd plenary on July 15, 2026, Kim Jong-chul, chairman of the Korea Media and Communications Commission (방송미디어통신위원회), announced his recusal in a personal statement just before the item was taken up. Before entering office he had, as public-interest work, submitted an opinion arguing for annulment of the approval, and he had filed a recusal request with the audit office in advance under Article 5 of the Conflict of Interest Prevention Act. The commission described the step as a preemptive removal of any fairness dispute and a guarantee of the decision’s objectivity; standing commissioner Ko Min-su chaired the YTN item thereafter. The chairman also stayed away from the July 20 hearing.
The head of a regulator removing the grounds for a prejudgment dispute confirms, from the Korean side, the proposition both cases share: the neutrality of the deciding body determines the legitimacy of the decision. It also stands in contrast to an FCC chairman who has publicly pressured the broadcaster under his review. Some argued, in turn, that the chairman had stepped away from the responsibility of deciding.
Both the advisers and the commissioners held back
The commission formed a five-member outside legal advisory panel on April 30, convened it five times, received individual comprehensive opinions on July 6, and held internal sessions on July 10 and 13. The panel framed two questions: whether the two-member defect permits revocation of the approval on the commission’s own authority, and whether there were substantive defects such as the letter directing a full sale of the shares. Checking YTN’s compliance with its re-approval conditions was separated out from the revocation question. Reports indicated the panel leaned toward the view that revocation is difficult at this stage.
The commissioners split as well. Yoon Sung-ok argued the matter had been deliberated enough — parliamentary scrutiny, the first-instance ruling, the panel’s work — and pressed for a vote on the 22nd. Choi Su-young countered that with litigation pending and the panel divided on the central issues, no conclusion should be presumed; Ryu Shin-hwan said a hearing was indispensable given how much the parties have at stake. Lee Sang-geun warned that acting while the legality of two-member votes is still in litigation could itself amount to abuse of authority. The process is not a formality wrapped around a predetermined outcome; the outcome is being worked out through the process. That caution carries the cost of delay, and paying it is better than rushing an order that cannot be undone.
Standing supervision beats a one-off revocation
Separating compliance review from the revocation question is a sound design. If the controlling shareholder fails to meet its conditions, sanction the breach. On May 15 the commission ordered YTN, which had not constituted its CEO nomination committee, to comply by July 31, resolving that failure to do so could bring revocation of approval, a shortened term or suspension of operations under Article 18 of the Broadcasting Act. Instruments to discipline the licensee without reversing ownership are already running. If management fails, the stake trades again in the market. The independence of a news channel is more durably protected by standing mechanisms — programming committees, CEO appointment procedures, re-approval conditions — than by reversing who owns it.
The same logic will be available to the next government
If the power to undo an approval is actually exercised, it does not become the property of one camp. The reasoning validated now will be used in the opposite direction by the next administration. Equally, if two-member votes are conclusively held unlawful, that standard will apply without regard to party. Establishing principles for how a regulator must be constituted and respecting legal relationships already formed can proceed together, and the final authority to reconcile them sits with the courts.
A power dormant for 50 years came back
The decisive variable in the U.S. case is not a new rule but the timing of an old one’s activation. The early-review power sat in the rulebook for more than half a century unused; practice, not the text, had been doing the restraining. Korea’s framework likewise retains provisions rarely invoked — conditional re-approval, denial, shortened terms, revocation on the regulator’s own authority. Regulatory risk should be measured against the maximum authority the law still contains, not against recent administrative habit. A provision that has not been used is not a provision that has disappeared.
Viewers become a variable in the proceeding
ABC pulled its viewers into a regulatory docket through its own channels and built its defense around the resulting number and the names of local police and fire leadership. It turned a docket that normally draws a few hundred comments into one drawing three orders of magnitude more. Korean re-approval procedures also include public hearings and comment windows, but participation remains largely formal. When both editorial autonomy and ownership are in dispute, the institutional resource a licensee can mobilize already exists. An accumulated record of local service is not a peacetime cost; it is a defense asset when the moment comes.
Regulatory risk moves into the contract
For Korean content distributors partnering with U.S. broadcast and FAST operators, a partner’s license exposure is now a live variable in carriage and programming agreements. A prolonged review delays channel launches and locks in scheduling uncertainty; in the worst case the channel disappears. Long-term supply contracts should spell out substitution provisions for regulatory change along with termination and settlement terms. As the deployment of the same counsel across the Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery antitrust suit and this license matter suggests, licensing risk and M&A risk move along one front.
Generative AI enters regulatory operations
Using generative AI to classify and summarize more than 150,000 comments, and recording both that use and the verification method in a regulatory submission, is a workflow Korean operators can adopt directly. Re-approval comment analysis, viewer complaint review and preparation for National Assembly audits involve the same high-volume text handling. Recording that humans re-checked a random sample is what holds the credibility of the document together.
What an unlicensed distribution path is worth
The pressure points in these cases are the broadcast license and the ownership approval. Streaming, FAST and YouTube distribution carry neither a renewal proceeding nor a largest-shareholder approval. Building a multi-layer distribution structure in the U.S. that does not rest solely on broadcast partnerships is no longer a growth strategy but risk management. Conversely, Korean licensees have reason to bank the U.S. case as reference material for their own arguments.
Not rushing the conclusion is the answer
The principle that government must not intervene in broadcasting is written into the law of both countries, and being written down has not been enough to make it hold. The United States is re-examining licenses it already granted, ahead of schedule; Korea is litigating the force of an approval it already granted. The routes differ; the question is one. How long does a franchise conferred by the state remain valid?
Korea’s answer is already inside its own process. The legality of two-member votes will be tested in the appeal that opens on August 28, and the controlling shareholder’s fitness is verified through standing mechanisms — compliance checks on re-approval conditions, the corrective order on the CEO nomination committee.
Principles for constituting a regulator must be established, and the party that relied on an approval must not be left carrying losses it had no reason to bear. The way to satisfy both is to refrain from pulling the conclusion forward by administrative discretion. A chairman recusing himself and commissioners refusing to presume an outcome sit in that direction. ABC’s August 5 reply and the Korean commission’s YTN decision are two tests of the same proposition, one in each market.
Sources
Primary — FCC filings and public notices
· FCC Media Bureau 공고 DA 26-541 (MB Docket No. 26-131, 2026.5.29) — 조기 갱신 절차·심사 기준 원문 — https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-26-541A1.pdf
· ABC Opposition 제출 문서, FCC ECFS — https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/26110068342/1
· MB Docket 26-131 접수 문서 검색(의견 15만3000건 포함) — https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/search-filings?q=26-131
U.S. — how the proceeding began
· NPR, “Following Kimmel’s Melania Trump joke, FCC orders early license renewal for 8 ABC stations” (2026.4.28) — https://www.npr.org/2026/04/28/nx-s1-5802997/fcc-abc-license-renewal-melania-trump-jimmy-kimmel
· CNBC, “Disney’s ABC files early broadcast licenses renewal” (2026.5.28) — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/28/disney-fcc-broadcast-licenses-renewal.html
· The Hollywood Reporter, “ABC Files TV Station Renewals to FCC ‘Under Protest’” (2026.5.28) — https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/abc-files-tv-station-renewals-fcc-kimmel-the-view-1236608008/
· TV Tech, “FCC Sets Comment Deadlines in ABC License Renewals” (2026.6.1) — https://www.tvtechnology.com/regulatory-legal/fcc-sets-deadlines-for-comments-in-abc-license-renewals
U.S. — the opposition filing and both sides
· Los Angeles Times, “ABC fires back at FCC, alleging ‘retaliation’ campaign on behalf of Trump” (2026.7.30) — https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2026-07-30/disney-digs-in-for-fight-with-fcc-amid-abc-stations-license-threat
· The New York Times, “ABC Formally Rebukes F.C.C. for Review of TV Licenses” (2026.7.30) — https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/business/media/abc-fcc-tv-licenses.html
· The Hollywood Reporter, “ABC Calls on FCC to Dismiss ‘Extraordinary and Unprecedented’ License Renewal Proceedings” (2026.7.30) — https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/abc-calls-on-fcc-dismiss-early-license-renewal-proceedings-1236659963/
· Variety, “ABC Asks FCC to Reject Petitions to Deny TV License Renewals” (2026.7.30) — https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/disney-abc-reply-fcc-license-renewals-reject-trump-1236823657/
· TheWrap, “ABC Calls on FCC to Dismiss Early Renewal License Review” (2026.7.30) — https://www.thewrap.com/industry-news/public-policy-legal/abc-fcc-dismiss-early-renewal-license-review-opposition-filing/
· The Desk, “Disney urges FCC to toss petitions challenging ABC broadcast licenses” (2026.7.30) — https://thedesk.net/2026/07/disney-urges-fcc-to-toss-petitions-challenging-abc-broadcast-licenses/
· LateNighter, “ABC Says FCC License Review Is Retaliation Over Jimmy Kimmel” (2026.7.30) — https://latenighter.com/news/abc-fcc-license-review-jimmy-kimmel-retaliation/
· Tampa Free Press, “ABC Battles FCC Over Early License Reviews” — FCC 측 입장 포함 (2026.7.30) — https://www.tampafp.com/abc-battles-fcc-over-early-license-reviews-citing-first-amendment-retaliation/
U.S. — public comment and third-party filings
· CNN Business, “Trump’s FCC targeted ABC. Viewers rushed to its defense” (2026.7.30) — https://us.cnn.com/2026/07/30/media/trump-fcc-abc-viewers-disney-first-amendment
· Deadline, “Former FCC Chairs Call Review Of ABC Licenses ‘An Assault On Free Speech’” (2026.7.28) — https://deadline.com/2026/07/fcc-abc-early-license-renewal-free-speech-1237005566/
· Variety, “FCC Slammed by Former Agency Officials Over Review of ABC’s Licenses” (2026.7.28) — https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/fcc-slammed-former-officials-abc-licenses-assault-on-free-speech-1236822592/
· ACLU 외 공동 의견서, “ABC Early License Renewal FCC Docket Comment” (2026.7.29) — https://www.aclu.org/documents/abc-early-license-renewal-fcc-docket-comment
Korea — the first-instance ruling and the appeal
· 한국기자협회, “법원 ‘2인 방통위의 YTN 최대주주 변경 승인 취소’” (2025.11.28) — https://m.journalist.or.kr/m/m_article.html?no=59763
· 아주경제, “유진그룹 ‘YTN 인수 승인 취소 판결, 적극 항소할 것’” (2025.11.28) — https://www.ajunews.com/view/20251128171639233
· 경향신문, “‘유진그룹 YTN 인수 승인 위법’ 판결로 ‘민영화 취소’ 수순?” — 재판부·판결 요지 (2025.11.28)
· 머니S, “유진이엔티, YTN 최대주주 변경승인 취소 판결에 항소” — 입장문 전문 및 서울고법 MBC 판결 인용 (2025.12.4)
· 한국경제, “유진이엔티 ‘YTN 최대주주 변경승인 취소’ 항소 — 2인 체제 방통위 의결, 위법 아냐” (2025.12.4)
· 뉴데일리, “‘방통위 2인 의결 적법’… 유진, YTN 대주주 취소판결에 항소” (2025.12.4)
· 한겨레, “유진그룹, ‘YTN 최대주주 변경승인 취소 판결’에 항소” — 보조참가인 지위 항소 경위 (2025.12.4)
· 한경비즈니스, “유진그룹, YTN 최다액출자자 판결 불복” — 2024년 2월 승인 시 부과된 10가지 조건 (2025.12.4)
· 한국기자협회, “국힘, ‘YTN 민영화 승인취소’ 항소 포기한 방미통위원장 고발” — 항소심 첫 변론기일 (2026.5.27) — http://www.journalist.or.kr/news/article.html?no=60963
Korea — the commission’s process and the chairman’s recusal
· 이데일리, “방미통위, ‘YTN 대주주 취소’ 당사자 의견 듣는다” — 김종철 위원장 회피, 고민수 직무대행 (2026.7.15) — https://edaily.co.kr/News/Read?mediaCodeNo=257&newsId=06068006645514848
· 뉴스토마토, “방미통위, 20일 유진·YTN 의견 청취…김종철 위원장 심의서 빠진다” (2026.7.15) — https://www.newstomato.com/ReadNews.aspx?no=1307344
· 뉴스토마토, “‘공정성’이냐 ‘책무’냐…YTN 장고 속 김종철 위원장 회피” — 회피 사유 및 참석 위원 (2026.7.24) — http://www.newstomato.com/ReadNews.aspx?no=1308152
· 한국기자협회, “방미통위, 유진 YTN 최대주주 직권취소?… 민영화 다시 수면 위” — 최수영·류신환 위원 발언 (2026.7.17) — http://www.journalist.or.kr/news/article.html?no=61293
· 디지털데일리, “방미통위, YTN 변경승인 직권취소 검토 착수…20일 의견청취” — 재승인 조건 분리 방침 (2026.7.16) — https://www.ddaily.co.kr/page/view/2026071608051158592
· 미디어오늘, “윤석열 정부의 무리한 YTN 민영화, ‘직권취소’ 논의에 신중” — 항소심 1차 변론 8월 28일 (2026.7.24) — https://www.mediatoday.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=335993
· 미디어오늘, “YTN 정상화 ‘경우의 수’는 유진 퇴출 뿐” (2026.7.16) — https://www.mediatoday.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=335822
· 미디어오늘, “108배 돌입한 기자들 ‘방미통위는 유진그룹의 YTN 최대주주 자격 취소하라’” — 740여 명 대기 (2026.7.29) — https://www.mediatoday.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=336091
· 미디어스, “방미통위 ‘YTN 법률자문단’ 운영 종료…의견청취 추진” — 자문단 검토 쟁점 (2026.7.15)
· SBS, “방미통위, 20일 YTN·유진 의견 청취…김종철 위원장은 심의 회피” — 윤성옥·최수영·류신환 위원 발언 대비 (2026.7.15)
· 뉴스1, “‘YTN’ 심사서 빠지는 김종철 방미통위원장…20일 의견 청취” — 이해충돌방지법 제5조 (2026.7.15)
· 전자신문, “방미통위, ‘YTN 최대주주 변경승인 취소’ 논의 본격화” (2026.4.17)
· 뉴시스, “법원 판결에 뒤집힌 YTN 매각… 방미통위, ‘승인 취소’ 카드 만지나” — 외부 법률자문단 구성 경위 (2026.4.17)
· 한국기자협회, “YTN 운명의 시간… 방미통위 최대주주 직권취소 여부만 남아” (2026.7.22)
Korea — re-approval conditions and the CEO nomination committee
· 한국기자협회, “방미통위, 사추위 구성 안 한 YTN·연합뉴스TV 시정명령” — 방송법 제18조 후속 처분 가능성 (2026.5.15)
· 아시아투데이, “YTN 노사, 사추위 구성 ‘평행선’…방미통위 직권조사 카드 꺼낼까” (2026.5.21)
· 연합뉴스, “YTN 노조 ‘판결 환영…정부, 유진그룹 자격 취소해야’” (2025.11.28)