|
|
Regulation of Obscenity, Indecency and Profanity
|
It is a violation of federal law to air obscene programming at any time. It
is also a violation of federal law to broadcast indecent or profane
programming during certain hours. (See
definitions}.
Congress has given the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) the responsibility for administratively
enforcing the law that governs these types of broadcasts.
The FCC has authority to issue civil monetary penalties,
revoke a license or deny a renewal application.
In addition, violators of the law,
if convicted in a federal district court, are subject to criminal fines
and/or imprisonment for not more than two years.
The FCC vigorously enforces this law
where we find violations. In 2004 alone, the FCC took action in 12
cases, involving hundreds of thousands of complaints, assessing penalties
and voluntary payments totaling approximately $8,000,000. The Commission has
also toughened its enforcement penalties by proposing monetary penalties
based on each indecent utterance in a broadcast, rather than proposing a
single monetary penalty for the entire broadcast.
At the same time, however, the Commission is careful of First Amendment
protections and the prohibitions on censorship and interference with
broadcasters' freedom of speech. The FCC has denied complaints in cases in
which we determined the broadcast was not indecent based on the overall
context of the programming. Regardless of the outcome, the FCC strives to
address every complaint within 9 months of its receipt.
|
|
|
|