Creative artists welcome the FCC’s inquiry into the question of whether violent content on television harms children, the Center for Creative Voices in Media, The Caucus of Television Producers, Writers & Directors, and quality children’s television advocate Peggy Charren, the founder of Action for Children’s Television told the FCC in filed comments.
However, we are concerned that in a perhaps well-intentioned, but extremely misguided effort to “protect children,” the Commission will regulate the content of possibly violent television programming. As in the battle over "indecent" TV content, consumer education and empowerment is the solution to the problem. Government censorship of television content is not. Click below to read our FCC comments.
Video and a transcript of our appearance on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer to dissent from the applause over the FCC's indecency fine of CBS is here.
On the same day the FCC fined CBS over half a million dollars for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" at the Super Bowl, Broadcasting & Cable magazine reported that the Kaiser Family Foundation found the public by and large didn't care all that much about the incident and wasn't particularly offended. Further, it was also revealed that of the half a million complaints the FCC received about Jackson and CBS, the vast majority were generated by the conservative Parents Television Council in an orchestrated e-mail drive.
To preserve Constitutionally-protected free speech on the broadcast airwaves, CCVM has joined a coalition of public interest groups, creative artists, creative artists' unions, broadcasters, and others petitioning the FCC to reconsider its indecency ruling, which is causing a "Big Chill" to descend over speech on our public airwaves.
“Our concerns are not hypothetical or far-fetched," wrote CCVM to FCC Chairman Powell on May 11 in support of the Petition for Reconsideration of the FCC's new indecency rules filed earlier by the coalition. "This week’s front page story in The New York Times, ‘Eye on F.C.C., TV and Radio Watch Words,’ cites numerous instances of producers and stations altering seemingly unobjectionable and inoffensive creative content to avoid any possibility of running afoul of the Commission’s opaque new standards. When the producers of the acclaimed PBS series ‘Masterpiece Theater’ feel obliged to water down that highly-respected show’s language for fear of an FCC enforcement action, then clearly the chilling of free and appropriate expression is real, it is pervasive, and it is contrary to the free expression rights and interests of not only America’s creative artists, but the American audience.
Television networks are not "distinguishing between artistic expression and vulgarity for profit," says Martin Kaplan, Associate Dean at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communications. “That's what happens in the context of a witch hunt."
Fear of censorship is no partisan issue. On the same day Rush Limbaugh asked on his radio program, “If we are going to sit by and the let the federal government get involved in this, if the federal government is going to censor what they think is right and wrong ... what happens if a whole bunch of John Kerrys or Terry McAuliffes start running this country and decide conservative views are leading to violence?", Howard Stern echoed similar concerns on his radio program about letting conservatives in Washington regulate speech.
To illustrate the danger, following the outrage over the Super Bowl half-time show and the baring of Janet Jackson’s right breast, NBC reedited "E.R." to delete a brief incidental exposure of an 80 year old woman's breast, over the objection of its creator, John Wells, one of the most respected creative producers in television. Said Wells, "While the unexpected exposure of Ms. Jackson's breast during the Super Bowl Half-Time Show was inappropriate and deplorable on a broadcast intended for viewers of all ages, 'ER's' incidental exposure of an elderly woman's breast in the context of a medical trauma is not comparable."
Added Wells, "adult viewing audiences at 10 p.m., who have been warned appropriately of a show's adult content, are more than capable of making the distinction and adjusting their viewing habits accordingly. These types of affiliate overreactions have a chilling effect on the narrative integrity of adult dramas.... This type of network behavior is one of the primary reasons that so many of today's producers and viewers are increasingly turning to HBO and other cable outlets that do not censor responsible story telling."
“Creative media artists understand the Commission’s desire to address complaints, some well-founded, about indecent programming,” continue Rintels and Charren in their letter to Chairman Powell. “We do not write to you to support ‘indecent’ programming. Rather, we write to support the preservation of creative, original, challenging, controversial, non-homogenized decent and appropriate programming, which is already in scarce supply, and is severely endangered by the Golden Globes decision. The Golden Globes ‘cure’ for indecent programming is proving worse than the disease. It goes too far and is by no means the least restrictive alternative available for the problem of indecent programming. It does not serve the public’s interest – including the interest of America’s children -- in a vibrant and diverse media. Therefore, we support the Petition for Reconsideration of the Commission’s decision in Golden Globes.”
If Congress and the FCC are concerned about indecency, then they should also be concerned about one of its root causes: media consolidation and concentration. Rich Hanley, director of the Graduate School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, says "This trend (toward increasingly indecent programming) is going to do nothing but accelerate," in large part due to existing FCC policies. "The interesting point with Michael Powell protesting is that this is the spawn of his doing."
Professor Hanley says that FCC policies have encouraged the consolidation of a handful of huge media companies all struggling to survive in an increasingly cutthroat business environment. The notion that the networks should operate in the public interest is a quaint relic of another time, he says. When the corporate structure is focused on ratings and profits, stunts like the one during the Super Bowl half-time show will become the norm.
Gov't Censorship of Indecency and Violence on TV
