7 Jun 2007 cinamod   » (Master)

Media Wars

This week, a federal appeals panel struck a blow against the FCC's ability to censor "obscene" content on television and radio. The FCC (though they may be exaggerating their case) fears that the opinion "could gut the ability of the commission to regulate any speech on television or radio".

I've never understood the FCC's prerogative when it came to regulating content for moral reasons. Nor have I understood (or agreed with) the Court's first-amendment jurisprudence when it comes to "obscenity" and "community standards".

The airwaves belong to the public. The first amendment grants us freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Case closed, as far as I'm concerned. Community standards and obscenity are noticeably absent from the Constitution - probably invented from the ether by some of those "activist judges" that today's Republicans get so up-in-arms about.

The government has already mandated that all televisions contain a V-Chip and that broadcasters rate their content according to the amount of "language", violence, sexuality, and etc. that it contains.

I am in favor of warning labels. For example, I'm quite happy that products list their ingredients and nutritional value. Whether these labels are government-mandated or come about via the "invisible hand of the market", they help make me a more informed consumer.

I am generally in favor of personal choice. True choice can only come about when you have informed choosers.

So, with these ratings (assuming that they are roughly accurate) and V-Chip-like technology, we have the ability to self-censor anything that we wouldn't want to watch (or more often, wouldn't want our progeny to watch).

So fsck community standards, and fsck the FCC. Get out of the business of fining Howard Stern and Opie and Anothony for the garbage they say on the airwaves. If FOX wants to become a hardcore pr0n channel, fine. Let them. So long as these broadcasters are required to accurately rate their content and we, their potential audience, have the ability to filter out undesirable content, I don't see the harm. (Though I also don't see the harm of a kid accidentally seeing a breast on TV our hearing a "naughty" word. But that's just me.)

The FCC should have never been permitted to police "community standards" in the first place. Maybe it was "necessary" for a while before we had V-Chip technology. But the technology has been mandated for 7 years now, and in light of this, the FCC's policing is wholly unwarranted.

The agency still does some useful things, like certifying that electronic devices don't interfere with one another. Let them do that, and get out of our radios and television sets. The government and my community have no right to legislate what I choose to see and hear, nor do they have the right to legislate what these broadcasters might wish to say (absent, perhaps, making knowingly factually inaccurate claims in order to deceive the public).

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