FCC Official’s Plea Goes Unheeded

Accusing broadcasters of trolling “the depths of decadence,” Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps challenged radio and television executives in early February to better police themselves regarding indecency and vulgarity on the airwaves and create a voluntary code of conduct, all by Easter Sunday.

Normally, broadcasters abhor dead air. But with a week to go before Copps’ suggested deadline, their silence has been deafening.

“How I wish the industry would take these ... pleas and warnings,” said Robert W. Peters, president of Morality in Media, a New York-based watchdog group founded by a Catholic priest in 1962. If broadcasters take more responsibility, he said, “the government can spend its tax dollars on something other than monitoring what goes out over the airwaves. These pleas have fallen on deaf ears.”

Actually, some of the problems Copps complained about may have been ebbing even before he spoke out. On Thursday, the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a Washington nonpartisan group, announced findings suggesting that sexual material on television fell by 29% from the 1998-99 season to the 2000-01 season, and serious violence dropped 17% in that span.

Radio, however, has been another matter. In fact, in the six weeks since Copps made his request, an Alaska court fined Tom Leykis’ distributor $150,000 after the talk-radio host mocked and criticized a female listener on the air; the FCC upheld a $14,000 fine against a DJ in Chicago who goes by the name Mancow, after he allegedly made lewd comments during an interview with strippers; and a Florida DJ was acquitted of animal cruelty charges after a pig was castrated on his show.

“Clearly the phenomenon of shock jocks is still out there,” Peters said.

Copps charged that the shock-jock mentality has moved from late-night talk shows to broadcasting’s corporate boardrooms.

The National Assn. of Broadcasters insists that it has not been ignoring Copps.

“We hear him loud and clear,” the group’s spokesman, Dennis Wharton, said. “We appreciate the commissioner’s honest and heartfelt concerns on the issue. When a commissioner speaks out on the issue of broadcast programming, we take notice.”

The group has not taken a position on Copps’ recommendation, Wharton said, in part because the lobbying group already has a “Statement of Principles” that urges broadcasters to avoid exploiting violence, glamorizing drug use, and airing sexual material that “panders to prurient or morbid interests.”

Broadcasters did have a code of conduct, in various forms, from the 1920s until 1983. But it was the federal government that made them get rid of it.

The Justice Department sued the association in 1979, saying provisions of the code violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. The government alleged that the code’s restrictions on commercials were actually a scheme by broadcasters to collude and drive up advertising rates.

When those narrow provisions for commercials were outlawed, Copps said, the industry abandoned the entire code, even though it “affirmed broadcaster responsibilities toward children, community issues and public affairs.”

Wharton, however, contends that the new “Statement of Principles” is “as tough or tougher than the code of conduct.”

At the end of last year, Copps and fellow commissioner Kathleen Abernathy asked radio companies to begin taping and archiving their broadcasts, or at least keeping voluntary transcripts, to make it easier to investigate indecency complaints filed by the public. Some commissioners have long complained that the FCC’s rules on obscenity and indecency place too much burden on listeners to police the airwaves, requiring them to provide a tape or transcript of any objectionable programming, as well as the station, date and time, before the agency would investigate a complaint.

Only a couple of radio conglomerates agreed to begin taping or said they were already doing so; most others ignored the suggestion.

In Copps’ challenge last month, issued in an opinion piece in USA Today, he also warned broadcasters that the government might step in if they continued their “race to the bottom,” trying to out-duel each other’s basest offerings.

It’s certainly not the first time the FCC has threatened broadcasters. In 1938, after Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” adaptation panicked listeners who didn’t realize the Martian invasion was a Halloween radio show, the FCC chairman at the time said government intervention was likely if the industry didn’t police itself.

More recently, members of Congress--including Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and others--attacked the entertainment and video-game industries for their violent and profane products. Attempts at legislating conduct, however, have fizzled out. Lieberman’s bill, which would have imposed heavy fines on entertainment companies who violated their own voluntary guidelines, went nowhere after music companies declined to draw up guidelines and the movie industry threatened to abandon its ratings system.

“That’s always a very fine line you walk when you deal with this, of government getting involved in programming decisions,” Wharton said.

According to Peters, a balance needs to be struck between free speech and artistic expression on one side and the maintenance of a decent society and safe environment for children on the other.

“It’s not necessary to serious communication. The impact on free speech is minimal, when you think about it,” he said, adding that he’s not saying such language should be forbidden, only restricted to certain times and contexts.

“I really have some appreciation for the concept of a community standard,” Peters said. Even with the tepid reception that greeted Copps’ proposal, one FCC staffer said he would continue hammering away at the issue. Violence and profanity will certainly be addressed in two weeks when the National Assn. of Broadcasters holds its annual convention, which all the members of the FCC are scheduled to attend. In fact, one seminar for broadcasters is titled “Managing the Risks of Today’s Controversial Programming,” while another will feature Copps and fellow FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin under the heading, “The Regulatory Face-off.”