Meek Broadcasters Help FCC Overstep Its Bounds

The FCC’s passing of a 24-hour indecency ban on radio, giving the commission the right to interpret what is decent or indecent material without regard to the differences in mores from city to city (“FCC Upholds 24-Hour-a-Day Ban on ‘Indecent’ Broadcasts,” July 13), is the latest in a series of setbacks for a country admired around the world for our history of allowing creative and artistic freedom to flourish. As new freedoms are embraced in Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R., a chill wind is sweeping across the U.S.A.

Americans take our freedoms, the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press in particular, for granted, which is why this latest setback has occurred. The latest ruling by the FCC to ban “indecency” on radio 24 hours a day can be directly attributed to the meek response by broadcasters and the ineffective lobbying efforts of their representative organization, the National Assn. of Broadcasters, to last year’s fining of 12 radio stations by the commission. Encouraged by their submissive reaction, the FCC has now taken a further step in its bid to become national interpreters of what is acceptable on American airwaves--even as the case is still pending in the courts.

Today’s electronic press is under siege, confronted by a commission that is once again overstepping its bounds in trying to act as parents for millions of America’s children. This attempt to dictate acceptable public entertainment, never an FCC brief, is interfering in an area that is strictly a community and family affair.

Children simply cannot be protected from the potentially harmful external influences facing them every day at home, in schools, from their friends or on radio and TV unless the parents have established the kind of relationship with their children that allows them to teach the difference between right and wrong.

Additionally, the FCC ruling is symptomatic of a government that increasingly accedes more to the wishes of the vocal minority than to the silent majority. If millions of people listen and enjoy controversial radio personalities, a few hundred letters should not constitute grounds for the FCC to scrutinize and fine radio stations.

In recent months, civil libertarians everywhere have decried the incoherent and vague indecency fines leveled by the FCC, but the talk has been cheap. Standing on the sidelines hoping this hysterical McCarthyism will go away plays into the hands of the headline-grabbing groups and elected officials who assume that an attack unchallenged is an attack agreed to. So, if we believe that the FCC fining some “dirty” deejays and “indecent” stations isn’t a part of the grander scheme to control and edit what music, art, film and other entertainment is made available to Americans, we haven’t been paying attention.

Radio stations should not pay fines, but instead should challenge the FCC in court to prove that they have aired “indecent” content. Any officials and businesses that attempt to censor or muzzle creativity and the inherent right of Americans to the freedom of expression should be singled out and held accountable.

America is a country based on diversity, not conformity. If you don’t like it, don’t listen to it or watch it. But don’t restrict anyone else from choosing for themselves.

See letters to Counterpunch, F6.