Associations Weigh In on FCC Plan to Loosen Indecency Restrictions

In April, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) solicited public comment on its plan to ease restrictions on profanity and nudity on television. The response was overwhelmingly negative.

“The public is outraged,” attorney Patrick Trueman, president and CEO of the nonprofit Morality in Media, told The Hill  (opens in a new tab).

According to the Washington, DC, newspaper, the FCC fielded more than 100,000 comments, “the vast majority in opposition to the proposed changes.”

The FCC was forced to review its indecency rules  (opens in a new tab) after the U.S. Supreme Court held last year that they weren’t clear enough. The commission has reduced a backlog of more than a million indecency complaints by 70 percent since then, in large part by dropping cases. The agency’s goal is to stop strict enforcement of standards and to pursue egregious offenders.

In April, the Parents Television Council called the plan “deeply vexing”  (opens in a new tab) and said that the FCC was supposed to work for the public, not the entertainment industry. PTC President Tim Winter also insisted “that the FCC give greatest heed to the voices of those who own the airwaves and who continue to support the broadcast decency law as necessary to protect their children.” The council wrote in June that the FCC “has failed in its responsibility to adjudicate complaints based on the merits on each case while inexplicably claiming that it has not changed any policy.”

Other groups support an overhaul of the rules.

“The rationale for broadcaster-specific limits on ‘indecent’ speech has crumbled under the weight of changes in technology and media consumption,” the National Association of Broadcasters wrote to the FCC  (opens in a new tab). “Children in particular enjoy unfettered access to content via devices that they carry in their pockets and backpacks—access that usually involves no subscription or special parental involvement. In this environment, the constitutionality of a broadcast-only prohibition on indecent material is increasingly in doubt.”

According to a FMQB.com news report  (opens in a new tab), a group of broadcasters led by Beasley Broadcast Group, Entercom, Galaxy Communications, Greater Media, Journal Broadcast Group, and Lincoln Financial wrote to the FCC that “a substantial change from current broadcast indecency policies is fully warranted.” The group also said the commission “should not in the future punish broadcast licensees for airing fleeting or isolated expletives or nudity; it should never have done so.”

The Student Press Law Center  (opens in a new tab) filed comments with the FCC in support of a more lenient penalty system. “The threat of financial ruin, combined with the uncertainty engendered by an unpredictable enforcement regime, has chilled collegiate broadcasters’ speech,” the group wrote. “The FCC has forced collegiate broadcasters to adopt policies that favor self-censorship over free speech.”

(photo by Chris James/Flickr)