Frist Puts Indecency
Bill on Faster Track
By REUTERS, from the
NYTimes on the Web, May 3, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Responding to
pressure from conservative groups, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is
attempting to jump-start legislation that would impose a tenfold increase on
fines for indecent broadcasts, congressional and industry sources said.
The Tennessee Republican is running a "hotline" on the version of the bill that
won approval in the House last year. Hotlining is a procedure that allows
the Senate to pass bills that are not expected to be controversial. Once a
bill is hotlined, any senator with an objection to the bill can place a "hold"
on it, which prevents the bill from being passed by unanimous consent.
Hotlining also indicates that the Senate leadership is anxious to move the
legislation.
Groups like the American Family Assn., headed by the Rev. Donald Wildmon, have
been pushing for a vote on the measure. On Tuesday, Wildmon sent an
"Action Alert" to members of his organization urging them to pressure senators
to take a vote.
The House version of the legislation has been languishing in the Senate Commerce
Committee as the panel's chairman, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, has been
unwilling to bring his version, or the House version, to a vote. Stevens
has said he wanted to wait and gauge the effectiveness of a new advertising and
education campaign launched by the TV industry before pushing any legislation.
In his missive, Wildmon accused Stevens of holding "this bill hostage for over
14 months" and that he "shortchanged" so-called "family and consumer groups"
when he conducted three hearings on the issue.
Stevens' reluctance, the decision by the networks and TV stations to sue the
Federal Communications Commission over the indecency regulations and the
political pressure helped trigger Frist's push, industry sources said.
"If you think about it, the indecency bill fits in with the current Senate
agenda with the flag burning and gay marriage bills," one industry executive
said. "There's been frustration on the right with Sen. Stevens and the
litigation by the broadcasters."
Last month, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, the affiliate organizations and the
Hearst-Argyle Television group sued the FCC over its decision to levy fines
under tougher indecency regulations that found that virtually any use of certain
expletives would be considered profane and indecent, even if it was a slip of
the tongue.
In March, the FCC proposed a $3.6 million fine against CBS and dozens of its
affiliates as TV regulators ruled on hundreds of thousands of indecency
complaints dating back to 2002. It was those proposed fines that
broadcasters targeted in their suit.
Under the legislation approved by the House on February 17, broadcasters who air
indecent programing would be liable for fines up to $500,000 for each incident.
The current maximum is $32,500 for a company. An individual now faces an
$11,000 fine for an indecent utterance and would face the same fine as a company
under the House-passed bill. The bill also removes an FCC provision that
gave individuals a warning before issuing a fine.
In addition, the bill also requires the FCC to hold a license-revocation hearing
after a third offense by a broadcaster and to respond to an indecency complaint
from a viewer or listener within six months.
A Senate version of the bill, which hasn't been voted on in the Senate Commerce
Committee, calls for raising the maximum fine on broadcasters for an indecency
violation to $325,000, with a cap of $3 million for one day, but does not
include any of the other provisions the House bill does. The House bill
does not include caps.
As defined by the FCC and the courts, material is indecent if it "in context,
depicts or describes sexual or excretory activities or organs in a patently
offensive manner as measured by contemporary community standards for the
broadcast medium."
While obscene speech has no constitutional protection, indecent speech does.
It can be aired from 10 p.m.-6 a.m., when few children are in the audience.
Broadcasters say they are forced to guess at what constitutes indecency because
the statute is so blurry. Because of the confusion and the fear of fines,
some have become extremely gun-shy over programming.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
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