As I mentioned the other day in response to an article by Reason's Jesse Walker, I think it's right and appropriate that we have broadcast content rules, and believe it's the FCC's job to develop and enforce them.
Jesse's key philosophical statement is this:
- Now as far as I'm concerned all this is an open-and-shut issue of free speech, disturbing not just because it puts a Washington agency in charge of what you're allowed to say and show on radio and television but because it has an obvious chilling effect on material that isn't nearly as pathetic as Bubba the Love Sponge's sophomoric jokes or Justin Timberlake's dance routines.
....And so we're stuck with an FCC increasingly obsessed with controlling who can use the airwaves and what they're allowed to say. If that sounds unobjectionable to you, just wait until it's your ox that's getting gored.
My philosophy on the matter is basically:
- very specific rules about what can be said and done when, would clarify this. Radio is different from TV, and there should be wide variation on what is permissible depending upon the time of day and the basic nature of the programming: no one expects NYPD Blue to be Sesame Street, but set the rules and penalties sufficient to ensure maximum compliance so that the public does not feel violated. That's the issue here, and there is no one else to protect the public from said violation than the FCC. Walker's Libertarianism does him a disservice here.
To which he replied by email:
- it's not my libertarianism that's serving me poorly here: I was opposed to indecency regs even when I was a junior high school liberal. But you don't explain just *why* you think there should be a public-airwaves exception to the First Amendment. Bubba the Love Sponge is a cultural low point, but how does it hurt anyone (except that pig he killed) to let him do his schtick behind a microphone? (And aren't kids supposed to be in school at 10:30 anyway?)
Article comments
1 - Jesse Walker
I should respond to this at length, and maybe I will over at my own blog, if I ever find the time.
For now I'll say this: Of course the media both reflects and creates the culture. But shock jocks didn't come along until the culture had progressed to a particular point, and if they were yanked off of FM they'd just find new homes -- indeed, they already have homes -- on cable and the Internet. My point is that there's stuff that's widely considered acceptable now that wasn't considered acceptable a few decades ago, and that regulatory action isn't going to turn the clock back. (It might even give the shock jocks more cachet, since they'd become in some sense forbidden. Check out Bubba the Love Sponge's website, with its declarations that he's "what the FCC doesn't want you to hear.")
2 - Eric Olsen
Thanks J, I have no problem with them retreating to less prominent quarters where people have to make an effort to get to them. I don't expect or necessarily desire for them to go away entirely, just to set up and enforce parameters on the public airwaves: not the Internet, not cable, not print. This is for symbolic as well as practical reasons, as I mentioned at the end of the post.