Abolish the FCC

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First Amendment

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

There are two very common mis-readings of this amendment. The first deals with the "separation of church and state" (text that you will note is not anywhere in the constitution) and the second is about the freedom of speech. This concerns the second.

When this was written, before the Industrial Revolution, the term "freedom" had an implicit component of responsibility with it. The intended object of the clause was political speech, but extending it to "all" speech doesn't change the basic premise. The freedom to do something is not a lincense to do whatever you want.

Anything that is broadcast on a "public" (broadcast) TV channel or radio station is equivelent to preaching it from a street corner. Nudity on a street corner is not permissible, so in general we would expect that it is not permissible on ABC either.

To stretch the analogy a bit, nudity is permissible behind closed doors, where the proprietor has at least pretended to make an effort to keep children out. This would be your pay cable stations.

The problem is not with the broad scope of what is permissible or not, it is the marginal cases of what is or is not profane (or does profanity even matter to the community), what is or is not immoral, etc. With a community of a quarter-billion people with many thousands of communities, it is virtually impossible to regulate on a national scale.

The imperfect solution is to define some relatively acceptable criteria, and let consumers exercise some judgement with the tuner. If you've read the warning labels on a chanisaw recently, you'll note that industry has a pretty low opinion of consumer judgement. Nevertheless, the "last mile" depends on cosumer judgement for good or ill.

Problems arrise when things are not as advertised. If NYPD Blue has some coarse language, this is more or less expected. If the Teletubbies uttered so much as a euphamism it would be unacceptable because of the expectations they created in the marketplace. This is why there was an uproar over Janet Jackson: it was supposed to be a family event, and the entire act even before the "wardrobe malfunction" was questionable for that description.

It would *possible* to regulate such things from the Commerce Department under the article's suggestion, but I think have a single place that broadcasters can get guidance is essential. That single place will just grow into another FCC.

Posted by: Font   Posted on: 06/10/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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