Columns

The nanny inside your TV

An advocacy group takes aim at stray curse words, leaving it up to courts to stop this absurd broadcast censorship.

By ROBYN BLUMNER
Published June 10, 2007

Why do the parents who make up the Parents Television Council think they have a right to raise everyone else's children?

This group is the Gladys Kravitz of public advocacy. Like an all-seeing neighbor peering from behind the drapes, it pounces on every errant expletive loosed over the airwaves. Then these folks scribble fulminating complaints to the Federal Communications Commission.

This will give you a little sense of what the PTC considers harmful to children. Individuals associated with it filed complaints with the FCC for the live airing of the 2003 Golden Globe awards during which the Irish rocker Bono said in his acceptance speech: "This is really, really f---ing brilliant. Really, really great."

I don't know much about the world of pop music, but even I know that Bono has spent years trying to bring resources and attention to the world's poor. Yet the PTC hears only evil in Bono's unscripted exuberance.

To make matters worse - much worse - the FCC agreed that Bono's utterance rose to the level of a federal offense. Casting aside decades of prior holdings finding that "fleeting expletives" would not subject broadcasters to sanctions, the FCC ruled last year that it reserves the right to find any use of the "F-word" violative of its indecency prohibitions.

This is no longer just some petty nuisance to broadcasters, who used to pay a small fine and be done with it. Thanks to the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, signed by President Bush a year ago this week, networks can be fined $325, 000 per violation, and if the offensive language is aired on multiple stations, the fine can run $3-million per incident.

Yes, this is absurd. Yes, this is Big Nanny run amok. Yes, if parents are worried about a curse word being heard by junior, they have the power to limit his viewing to Davey and Goliath reruns. But Congress and the president obviously thought that keeping do-gooder rock stars from using colorful vernacular in a moment of glee was of pre-eminent national importance.

The new law demonstrates why the courts are the only branch of government that will protect our freedom of speech. Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door to this kind of pandering to the Christian Right when it ruled long ago that the broadcast medium enjoys less First Amendment protection than print. According to the court, broadcasts that air over the public spectrum are a "uniquely pervasive presence in the lives of all Americans, " and thereby invite the long arm of the state to rewrite scripts.

But with the advent of cable television and the Internet, the court's rationale for treating broadcast differently and allowing government censorship has simply been overtaken by technology. Broadcast is no longer "uniquely pervasive, " certainly no more than the new media forms which have been found to enjoy full First Amendment protection.

Yet just as the sophic underpinnings of government censorship are losing their footing, the FCC is asserting itself with even more vigor.

The FCC is now encouraging Congress to give it the power to regulate violence on television in addition to indecency, and some lawmakers from both parties are amendable. In a new report, the agency claims that parental controls aren't working to keep violent content from children. The proof, it says, is that only about 12 percent of parents say they use cable box blocking or the V-chip - which was mandated by Congress in 1996 to be manufactured into new television sets.

The V-chip was designed to give parents the choice of whether to block certain maturity rated programs. It wasn't intended to force parents to act.

And what exactly does the FCC intend to regulate into oblivion? The report discusses everything from football games to shows that depict graphic mutilation, but doesn't recommend any specific definition. Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate wrote that she worries about the influence of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on her children.

History proves that there's no real stopping the hand of the censor once it's given license.

The courts have simply got to stop the insanity. An encouraging ruling on Monday suggests reason to hope. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the FCC's new strictures on "fleeting expletives" on the grounds that the agency had not given a reasoned basis for the tougher standard. But the court also warned the FCC that it viewed the punishment of isolated curse words as unconstitutional, so it shouldn't bother trotting out the same rules with better reasoning.

Now let's see if this decision withstands the promised appeals.

The Parents Television Council says that it objects not just to shows with sex, foul language and violence, but "stories and dialogue that create disdain for authority figures, patriotism, and religion."

The evening news had better watch its step.

[Last modified June 9, 2007, 20:01:28]