Murdoch Dealt Blow in N.Y. Post Fight

The Senate killed an amendment Wednesday that would have restored the Federal Communications Commission’s ability to waive its newspaper-television cross-ownership rule.

The amendment, by Sen. Steve Symms (R-Idaho), could have enabled publisher Rupert Murdoch to keep media properties in New York and Boston. But after a heated debate, the Senate voted 60-30 to table, or kill, the measure.

Symms’ spokesman Tom Lowery said it was likely that the senator would reintroduce the provision later. Symms had tried to attach the amendment to a civil rights bill because, he said, it affected First Amendment liberties.

His provision would have repealed a measure inserted last month into a giant spending bill by Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), stripping the FCC of its power to extend waivers of the cross-ownership rule. Murdoch has the only outstanding waivers, enabling him to own the New York Post and WNYW-TV in New York and the Boston Herald and WFXT-TV in that city.

Two other pieces of legislation awaiting action could give Murdoch more time. A bill in the House would repeal the Hollings amendment and restore the FCC’s right to extend waivers. Sens. Daniel P. Moynihan (D-N.Y.) and Alfonse D’Amato (R-N.Y.) have introduced a bill to give Murdoch until January, 1989, to resolve his situation with the New York Post.

The Hollings-Kennedy amendment has drawn criticism from politicians who see it as Kennedy’s revenge on the Herald, which has not been editorially kind to the senator. D’Amato complained that the provision “puts Congress in the position of saying, ‘Freedom of expression is OK so long as you . . . don’t harpoon me.’ ”

Murdoch had a March 6 deadline to sell the Post and until June 30 to sell the Herald. But a federal appeals court has given him 45 days after it rules in the case. Oral arguments are set for Feb. 11.