ASSOCIATED PRESS
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell asked Congress yesterday for a tenfold increase in the amount of fines the panel can levy against broadcasters for indecent or obscene programming.
Mr. Powell said the maximum fine of $27,500 per incident was not enough to persuade broadcasters to watch their language.
“Some of these fines are peanuts,” Mr. Powell said at a National Press Club luncheon. “They’re just a cost of doing business. That has to change.”
The two largest fines were $1.7 million against Infinity Broadcasting in 1995 to settle several cases against shock jock Howard Stern, and $357,000 in October against Infinity for a segment in which a couple was said to be having sex in New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Mr. Powell’s comments came a day after he asked his fellow commissioners to overturn a much-criticized decision that an expletive uttered by rock star Bono on a network program was not obscene.
During last year’s NBC broadcast of the Golden Globes Awards, the lead singer of the Irish rock group U2 said “this is really, really… brilliant.”
The FCC’s enforcement bureau ruled in October that the comment was not indecent or obscene because Bono used the word as an adjective, not to describe a sexual act. “The performer used the word… as an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation,” the bureau said.
Mr. Powell circulated a proposed ruling to the four other commissioners on Tuesday. He needs the votes of two of the four to overturn the decision.
The enforcement bureau had rejected complaints from the Parents Television Council and more than 200 people, most of them associated with the conservative advocacy group, who accused dozens of TV stations of violating restrictions on obscene broadcasts by airing portions of the program last January.
Under FCC rules, broadcasters cannot air obscene material at any time and cannot air indecent material between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.
In a letter to the Parents Television Council last November, Mr. Powell said the FCC needed to balance its rules against indecency and obscenity with the First Amendment right to free speech.
Some lawmakers have criticized the FCC decision.
Rep. Phil Gingrey, Georgia Republican, introduced a resolution that called it the “latest salvo in a string of decisions by the Federal Communications Commission that establishes a precedent regarding the use of universally recognized vulgar expletives on our nation’s public airwaves.”
And Reps. Doug Ose, California Republican, and Lamar Smith, Texas Republican, proposed legislation that would ban five words and three phrases from the airwaves.
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