Critics See Report as a Reflection of Rising Intolerance

Some print and television executives expressed wary disapproval Wednesday of broad condemnations of sexually explicit and violent materials issued in the Justice Department’s pornography report, saying that the denunciations mirror a rising intolerance of expression that falls outside the American mainstream.

The same executives, largely from firms that distribute some sexually oriented materials, denied that their products were like the sexually explicit materials attacked in the 2,000-page report released by the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, appointed a year ago.

Although many played down the potential impact of the report’s findings, others predicted that the report could have some lasting effect on their businesses. One entertainment executive said that the motion picture production business could be most dramatically affected if the report’s condemnations receive widespread endorsement.

“Are they specifically taking aim at us?” one entertainment industry executive said of the report. “They don’t have to. They damage my whole industry’s image by lumping it in with pornography.”

The cable television industry, which came under especially sharp criticism in the report, argued that it already has self-imposed guidelines barring distribution of the type of material attacked in the report and has backed federal laws to limit its dissemination. Four of the panel’s 92 recommendations urge tighter federal, state and local control of cable-TV and satellite transmission of obscenity.

Letter Hurts Magazines

The strongest objections were made by magazine executives, whose industry suffered sales losses after the panel in February sent a letter to major stores that sell Playboy, Penthouse and similar publications. The letter stated that the firms had been named as “involved in the sale or distribution of pornography” and that failure to refute the letter would be viewed as an admission of the charge.

Some chains, including Southland Corp.’s 8,100 7-Eleven stores, pulled Playboy and similar magazines from sales racks after receiving the letter.

Dallas-based Southland had no comment on the pornography report, but Playboy Enterprises Inc. Chairman Hugh M. Hefner noted Wednesday that the document specifically excludes Playboy-style magazines from its own definition of pornography.

The report states that the “true pornography industry is quite simply different from and separate from the industry that publishes ‘men’s magazines’ ” as well as from mainstream cable, TV and motion picture businesses.

‘Self-Styled Moralists’

Hefner charged that the commission’s February letter did “irreparable harm” to the magazine. “But the First Amendment is strong enough to resist the ill-advised attacks of self-styled moralists and government ‘crusaders’ alike,” he said.

The Washington lawyer for the Magazine Publishers Assn., Andrew Lipps, criticized what he called an “undercurrent” in the report that advocates government pressure on unpopular forms of expression.

The panel stated that it has “both the right and duty to condemn, in some cases, that which is properly constitutionally protected” despite a legal tradition against the regulation of free expression.

“The commission takes the position that it can attempt to regulate or suppress distribution of certain constitutionally protected material,” Lipps said. “That doctrine ought to be given a stillbirth.”

But others were more muted in their criticism. The National Cable Television Assn., a Washington trade group representing about 75% of the 40-million-subscriber cable business, voluntarily bars X-rated programs from its systems, spokesman Steve Tuttle said.

1984 Law Cited

The commission’s call for stronger obscenity laws covering cable “are not that different than what already governs the cable industry” under a 1984 federal law enacted with the industry’s strong backing, Tuttle said.

And a spokesman for HBO-Cinemax, the nation’s biggest pay-television movie service, said the commission members “did what they thought was best” in issuing their report, although he called some of its recommendations “unfair and unfortunate.”

“There’s a general societal trend toward more conservative values. I’d guess this commission is a pretty clear reflection of that,” HBO Vice President David Salyers said. “Certainly, the selection of the commissioners is a reflection of that.”

But Salyers said his company’s video materials--including sexually oriented late-night films--”are high-quality home entertainment” demanded by the service’s 16.4 million subscribers and are not obscene.

Hard-Core TV Material

The sole national distributor of hard-core television programming, the Fort Worth, Tex., FUN Network, stated Wednesday that the panel’s recommendations would have no impact on its 20,000 subscribers.

“Under the First Amendment, the only people who can see it (the FUN Network) are people who go out of their way to get it,” said Robert Steinman, president of the service. FUN’s hard-core films are beamed via satellite to homes with special receiving dishes and decoding equipment.

James McKinney, head of the Federal Communications Commission’s Mass Media Bureau, said the agency has no position on satellite transmission of X-rated films as long as the signal can only be received with signal-descrambling gear.

Were an X-rated film sent without scrambling, he added, the sender would run afoul of both the FCC and a federal criminal law against broadcasting obscene utterances.