The Unreality of War

War is hell, unless the Federal Communications Commission has a say in the matter. Then it is reduced to heck, as occurred during Tuesday’s broadcast of a “Frontline” report about U.S. troops fighting in Iraq. Fearful of being hit with stiff FCC indecency fines, the nonprofit PBS distributed a censored copy of a report chronicling U.S. soldiers charged with keeping Iraq’s main highway open.The crew of “Frontline” showed a small group of soldiers who did their best under tough conditions, and who reacted in entirely human ways when their lives were threatened by the enemy. But some viewers, including those who watched on Los Angeles station KCET, saw the censored version of the report, which presented the remarkable fiction of soldiers in battle watching their language.

This country is awash in reality TV, except from the war front, where real-life portrayals are most needed. It’s a shame that “Frontline” has become the latest casualty in an increasingly ugly culture war waged by conservative zealots eager to hijack the airwaves. They are succeeding in large measure because the government enforces an overly vague definition of “indecency.”

When indecency is in the eye of the beholder, the Federal Communications Commission can be easily cowed by a campaign of intimidation from the outside. That is what happened in 2003 when the commissioners reversed their staff’s initial determination that the offhanded use of an expletive by Bono, the rock star, at an awards ceremony didn’t amount to a case of indecency.

Congress is threatening to make matters worse by raising indecency fines to $500,000 or more per incident. This at a time when it’s becoming harder for broadcasters (including the Los Angeles Times’ parent, Tribune Co., we should note as a matter of full disclosure), which are always fearful of losing their licenses, to discern the rules of the game.

This situation is not tenable, which is why some broadcasters are considering a legal challenge to the FCC’s indecency rules and their enforcement, as The Times’ Jube Shiver Jr. reported Tuesday. The rules should not only be clarified but loosened. At a time when viewers can watch racier fare on hundreds of cable channels, courts should revisit the old rationale for limiting broadcasters’ 1st Amendment rights in the first place -- the notion that the airwaves are a scarce public resource.