Joe Armstrong, the proprietor of WJBE 99.7 FM/1040 AM — whose name letters pay tribute to the unique WJBE’s proprietor, the Godfather of Soul, James Brown — says the Federal Communications Commission is threatening to revoke his broadcast license over his prior conviction for a tax crime, one which occurred years earlier than he took possession of the station.

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Joe Armstrong, the proprietor of WJBE 99.7 FM/1040 AM — whose name letters pay tribute to the unique WJBE’s proprietor, the Godfather of Soul, James Brown — says the Federal Communications Commission is threatening to revoke his broadcast license over his prior conviction for a tax crime, one which occurred years earlier than he took possession of the station.

Institute for Justice

The proprietor of Knoxville, Tennessee’s only Black-owned radio station, WJBE, is preventing again towards the Federal Communications Commission because the company is threatening to revoke his broadcast license due to a previous felony conviction.

Joe Armstrong, the proprietor of WJBE 99.7 FM/1040 AM — whose name letters pay tribute to the unique WJBE’s proprietor, the Godfather of Soul, James Brown — advised NPR that the FCC is threatening to revoke his broadcast license over his prior conviction for a tax crime, one which occurred years earlier than he took possession of the station in 2012.

Armstrong stated the radio station is a fixture in Knoxville, serving as a supply of reports for the Black group — being very a lot a community-oriented station. It broadcasts native information and climate, church companies, rising artists, free promoting for struggling small companies and, in recent times, details about the COVID-19 pandemic, based on the Institute for Justice, a civil rights group that’s representing Armstrong’s case.

The FCC is questioning whether or not Armstrong, a former long-serving state consultant within the Tennessee General Assembly, would be capable to personal a radio station with integrity following his conviction in 2016 for making a false statement on his tax return.

“It’s not like this is something that happened, let’s say, this year or last year — we’re talking about something that happened in 2008,” Armstrong stated.

Around that point, Armstrong and a companion legally purchased cigarette tax stamps that had been later offered for a revenue following the Tennessee legislature’s vote to increase the state’s cigarette tax, based on the Institute for Justice.

His accountant reportedly didn’t correctly pay the taxes on this sale, leading to Armstrong dealing with bother with the IRS. In 2016, he was acquitted of many of the expenses towards him and was convicted of two counts of federal tax fraud. (Armstrong’s accountant, Charles Stivers, was convicted of tax fraud and was granted probation in 2017.)

“There’s a lot of people out here that have made a mistake or have been falsely accused and punished for something,” Armstrong stated. “But when people make restitution, when they’ve done everything that they’re supposed to do — paid their fine[s], completed the community service — they’ve shown that their character, if whatever they did, it was a mistake.”

Joe Armstrong says WJBE is a fixture in Knoxville, serving as a supply of reports for the Black group — being very a lot a community-oriented station.

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Joe Armstrong says WJBE is a fixture in Knoxville, serving as a supply of reports for the Black group — being very a lot a community-oriented station.

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After Armstrong’s conviction, the decide referred to as his offense an “aberration” in an in any other case “exemplary life.” Armstrong’s civil rights, together with his proper to vote, had been restored in 2020. In 2017, he reportedly let the FCC find out about his conviction, which Armstrong says had induced no points till final 12 months.

“I’ve had the opportunity after my conviction [to show] that I have the character [to operate the station] … the only minority station in this market,” Armstrong stated.

Now, Armstrong and his legal professional are questioning why the fee would strip the station’s license and implement its 33-year-old character qualifications policy for radio license holders.

Andrew Ward, the legal professional representing the case, argues that Armstrong’s earlier conviction is irrelevant to his capability to personal and function WJBE responsibly, saying that stripping the station of its license hurts the group greater than something.

“WJBE has been a beacon for more than a decade. It makes zero sense that the FCC would threaten to take that away because of Joe Armstrong’s 14-year-old, unrelated tax crime,” Ward stated in an announcement to NPR.

The FCC declined to touch upon Armstrong’s pending case, because the case remains to be in listening to. Paloma Perez, press secretary for the FCC, advised NPR that the fee has an obligation to make sure that everybody holding a license to make use of the general public airwaves “does so in the public interest.”

“It is longstanding practice that any licensee with a felony conviction be placed into hearing in order to examine whether the licensee has the requisite character qualifications to remain a trustee of the public airwaves,” Perez advised NPR in an announcement.

Armstrong’s case with the FCC is much like a number of circumstances the place the fee has positioned licensees into listening to standing attributable to earlier felonies.

In Alabama, Michael Hubbard, a former speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives and CEO of Auburn Network Inc., was convicted in 2016 by a jury of violating 12 counts of Alabama’s ethics code.

Hubbard, who owns and operates a number of radio stations throughout Alabama, was additionally questioned by the FCC concerning his earlier convictions and whether or not he ought to proceed to carry his license. After months of arguments and hearings, the FCC in the end did not revoke Hubbard’s licenses.

In Pennsylvania, Roger Wahl — the proprietor of WQZS, a classic-rock radio station in Meyersdale — additionally went by way of legal proceedings with the FCC over his station license following a number of expenses associated to a felony investigation.

Wahl pleaded responsible to expenses linked with accusations that he solicited strangers to sexually assault his feminine good friend by organising a faux on-line courting profile, native TV station WJAC 6 News reported. In April 2023, the FCC revoked Wahl’s license.