Kerry Opposes Cable Indecency Crackdown
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 6/5/2004 8:30:00 PM
Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry appears to side with cable and satellite on the question of whether indecency regulations should apply to pay services, although he also appears to support the current indecency crackdown on broadcast.
"I think there is a distinction between public broadcast and the notions we’ve had historically about family time, family hour—and what you buy privately and personally," Kerry told C-SPAN in an interview to be broadcast Sunday.
"I am not in favor of government interference and censorship and restriction of what an individual privately can decide to do in their home, in their own space, so to speak," he said, but he did seem to be OK with broadcast indecency regulation "where you have children involved, where you have a broader cross-section of the public, where there is sort of a sense of family time or hour."
Kerry said he didn't believe there had been an overreaction to the Super Bowl incident.
"I don’t think that was exaggerated. I thought that was in poor taste and wrong -- wrong venue, wrong timing, wrong place, wrong audience. So, there are some standards and pretty generally people should know what they are."
Kerry called media concentration dangerous and points out that he would have voted with the majority to overturn the FCC's ownership dereg had he not missed the vote last fall.
"I wasn’t there for the vote, but I was 100% in favor of overturning his rule," he said, adding "I think that too much media in the hands of one powerful entity or one individual is a mistake. I think it runs counter to the foundation of our country. I think it runs counter to the need for Americans to know that they are getting news and information from multiple sources that are not singularly controlled."
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