Making the FCC Irrelevant
by Rick Rockwell
Fair warning: a discussion of the FCC and federal courts follows, so get ready for plenty of cursing.
Rupert Murdoch is the one person smiling about all this cursing today. Not only does he look like the Cheshire Cat, poised as he is to swallow The Wall Street Journal, but now his network cuts the knees out from under the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In case you missed it, Murdoch’s FOX network triumphed over the FCC on Monday.
The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York ruled that the FCC had capriciously branded two FOX broadcasts as indecent. Although the FCC did not levy any fines for these broadcasts, Murdoch ordered an appeal. And the court’s ruling effectively challenges the authority of the FCC to police content over the airwaves.
You might expect cheering from all free speech advocates over this, and some like the Media Access Project are doing just that.
Here’s what they are endorsing:
- The right of Cher (Cheryl Sarkisian LaPiere, by her real name) during the 2002 Billboard Music Awards to react to her critics by saying “fuck ‘em.”
- The right of Nicole Richie during the 2003 Billboard Music Awards to say: “Have you ever tried to get cow shit out of a Prada purse? It’s not so fucking simple.”
When we are discussing the public's airwaves, that’s the least we can expect. As a parent, I don’t need so-called celebrities teaching my child new and interesting phrases. Of course, as a good parent, should I really be allowing my child to watch anything that has either Cher or Nicole Richie attached to it?
But the poor choices of who society decides to elevate to celebrity status is not the point. The point is parents can’t expect a V-chip, a rating, or even their own vigilance to prevent their children from hearing expletives on over-the-air live television if broadcasters don’t use a delay system. Hasn’t the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident taught us anything?
FOX and the networks argue they can police themselves: that the time has long passed for the FCC to play national nanny for broadcast content; and that FCC rulings and fines have a chilling effect on content and programming.
Broadcast history tells us something different. Left on their own, the networks prove time and again that they no longer serve the public interest but instead give us sensationalism as a means to profit. They are worried that cable and satellite have cut so far into their audience that they must counter-program with more sex, violence and of course foul language.
“Any broadcaster who sees this decision as a green light to send more gratuitous sex and violence into our homes would be making a huge mistake,” said FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat. Both Democrats and Republicans on the FCC think letting network television decide how to handle the public’s airwaves is a bad idea.
Actually, since the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the FCC is weaker than anytime since the Hoover administration. The licensing process is broken. Most networks rarely serve the public interest on the public airwaves, instead the media conglomerates have one goal: wring as much cash from this public concession as possible.
Likely, the FCC will appeal this decision to a conservative Supreme Court, which could go either way: deciding for parents and others who believe a modicum of polite conversation is necessary on the public’s airwaves during certain hours or going with the corporate media.
The problem may be that our system of broadcast regulation is so broken, one court decision likely won’t make much difference. Congress and the courts are long overdue to overhaul the entire system. And those who think there are simple fixes, should just remember the immortal words of Nicole Richie.
(The cartoon is from radicalgraphics.org, which offers its material for free.)
Rupert Murdoch
Nicole Richie
Cher
FCC
television
indecency
FOX
corporate media
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