PTC to FCC: Stay the Course
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 9/21/2006 11:49:00 AM
The Parents Television Council has asked the FCC to uphold its original ruling that four expletives broadcast by Fox, CBS and ABC violate FCC rules.
Broadcasters sued over the decisions, but the FCC asked, and was granted by the court, a chance to review those decisions and allow broadcasters and others to comment on them. The FCC didn't solicit comment the first time becuase it was not fining the stations but rather was showing them what kinds of things it would find objectionable going forward.
"It is clear that the broadcast networks would prefer to assert a "right" to air unlimited profanity at any time of day," PTC said, "rather than submit to the established and reasonable principle of protecting children between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., a standard which has already been upheld by the Supreme Court."
"It is the commission's responsibility to vigorously enforce the laaw as written and to carefully adjudicate the hundreds ot thousands of indecency complaints from the American people."
That includes a lot of PTC members, whose complaints helped spur the FCC's crackdown on profanity and indecency.
Of the technological solutions--v-chip, ratings--that broadcasters argue sufficiently protect children, PTC says the ratings the chip is based on are arbitrary and unreliable. And even if they weren't, PTC says, that would not absolve broadcasters of the responsibility of adhering to existing indecency laws.
"We would not tell freeway drivers they must protect themselves from drunk drivers by deploying seatbelts and airbags. We hold those accountable who perpetrate the wrongdoing.
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