Do you get mad when you find a $25 parking ticket stuck under your windshield wiper? Then imagine CBS’ reaction on March 15 when the Federal Communications Commission fined it a record $3.6 million for airing “indecent” material in an episode of “Without a Trace.” The network, along with Fox (which was also penalized for a separate incident), fired back by filing suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Last week, the nonprofit Center for Creative Voices in Media joined the network suit when it filed a motion to intervene. “We are suing the FCC for inconsistent and arbitrary application of its indecency regulations for television,” says Charlottesville resident Jonathan Rintels, the Center’s executive director. “The way they are applying these rules violates our First Amendment rights,” he says
In determining whether material is indecent, the FCC uses a number of factors (see www.fcc.gov for details) and ultimately judges each incident on a case-by-case basis. The lack of specific guidelines has created an environment where networks have little idea what will land on the Commission’s radar. Calling their decisions “consistently inconsistent,” Rintels says that the FCC’s latest action has only compounded the uncertainty.
“That causes a tremendous amount of self-censorship because people just don’t know where the line is,” he says.
The situation will likely intensify now that a Senate committee has approved legislation that raises the current maximum fine the FCC can levy to $325,000 from $32,500 (the fines can accrue into the millions because the FCC can fine each of a networks’ local affiliates separately). “That’s probably going to create the amount of speech that’s censored tenfold,” says Rintels. “For a local station, that’s serious.”
As the father of two young children, Rintels says he sympathizes with parents concerned about the coarseness of contemporary culture, but believes that parents should take more of a role. “That’s one of the perverse things about this whole government censorship of television,” he says, citing the V-Chip, cable and satellite TV boxes, and the ratings system as just a few of the many aids at their disposal. “Parents don’t think that they need to take responsibility, and the government will take it for them. That’s wrong,” Rintels declares. “We have it absolutely backwards. The government shouldn’t be censoring content. Parents should pick and choose what their families see.”—Jayson Whitehead