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Chairman Upton and Members of the Committee, I appreciate the opportunity to
appear before you to testify on this important issue.
I represent the Parents Television Council's 850,000 members, along with
untold millions of parents who, like me, are disgusted, revolted, fed up,
horrified -- I don't know how to underscore this enough -- by the raw sewage,
ultra violence, graphic sex, and raunchy language that is flooding into our
living rooms night and day.
A major responsibility of the FCC is to ensure that those who use the public
airwaves adhere to standards of decency. Yet, looking at the FCC's track record
on indecency enforcement, it becomes painfully apparent that the FCC could care
less about community standards of decency or about protecting the innocence of
young children.
In the past two years, the FCC has received literally hundreds of thousands
of complaints of broadcast indecency from fed-up, angry, frustrated parents, yet
the FCC hasn't seen fit to agree with a single complaint. In fact, in the entire
history of the FCC this agency has never -- never-fined a single television
station in the continental United States for broadcast indecency.
In the FCC's view, everything on broadcast TV is -and always has been -
decent. This is ludicrous.
The FCC is a toothless lion and its non-actions are not only irresponsible,
they're inexcusable. Either the FCC has no idea what it's doing, or it just
doesn't care what the public thinks. There's no third explanation.
Indecencies and obscenities are now everywhere on broadcast TV. This past
year, the Parents Television Council released a series of three Special Reports
looking at the State of the Television Industry. Sex on TV has become
increasingly explicit, with children exposed to more direct references to
genitalia, prostitution, pornography, oral sex, kinky practices, masturbation,
and depictions of nudity during prime time viewing hours - and yes, that
includes the so-called "Family Hour" -- than they would have been just
a few short years ago. Foul language during the family viewing hour alone
increased by 95% between 1998 and 2002
Thanks to some envelope-pushing shows you can now hear words like
"asshole" and "bullshit" on primetime broadcast TV. Live
awards shows are pushing the boundaries of acceptable language for broadcast TV
by "accidentally" allowing the "f" and "s" words
to slip past network censors. The "f" word has been used on broadcast
television four times in the last year alone.
The broadcast networks are laughing at the public because they know they can
do or say whatever they want to over the broadcast airwaves and the FCC won't
lift a finger to penalize them.
And it's not just the late night dramas that are pushing standards downward.
Consider the following, which aired on an NBC special this past May at 8:00 -
during the so-called Family Hour. In this scene, Dana Carvey appears as one of
his old Saturday Night Live characters, "Church Lady," to talk to
former child star Macaulay Culkin about his sleepovers with Michael Jackson.
Church Lady: "Did he ever dangle anything in front of you at the
sleepovers?" Culkin: "Dangle what?" Church Lady: "Oh, I
don't know. Say, his 'happy man loaf'? …When he moon-walked, he didn't moon
you as he walked, did he? ...How about your friends you took to the sleepovers.
Did he ever get into Billy's jeans?" Second guest, Michael Imperioli:
"I mean come on, you trying to tell me you're screwing your little jingle
bells up against the King of Pop and his shalonz never rose up to salute you?
Come on, man. Side by side on the Sealy Posturepedic, you never played 'hide the
toast'? Give me a break." Church Lady: "Alrighty, well, I think it's
time to 'Beat It.'"
What child needs to be exposed to this? Is pedophilia now a laughing matter?
Would you want to have to explain to your youngster what "hide the
toast" means? Nevertheless, this was broadcast over the public airwaves -
the public's airwaves -- right into the family home, "the one place,"
according to the Supreme Court, "where people ordinarily have the right not
to be assaulted by uninvited and offensive sights and sounds."
My libertarian instinct makes me uncomfortable with the notion of coming
before Congress to ask for your help, but I do so now, on behalf of tens of
millions of parents, simply because it's time that Congress inserted itself to
halt this growing problem. The Congress, pure and simple, needs to insist that
the FCC do its job correctly.
What should the FCC be doing that it's not doing presently?
It begins with the need for the FCC to start monitoring what's on broadcast
television. The FCC has a whopping $278 million + annual subsidy from the
Congress, yet somehow can't find the time or the resources to monitor what's on
broadcast television. (Parenthetically, let me point out that with a budget of
approximately two percent of the FCC's, the Parents Television Council manages
to do it.)
It shouldn't be up to the public to point out the violations on the airwaves.
It should be up to the FCC to find them.
How disinterested is the FCC in its responsibility to monitor indecency on
television? Even with that $278 million annual subsidy. The FCC apparently still
can't afford to have a single person working full time on this issue. Not a one.
That fact comes to us from the FCC directly.
Second, the FCC needs to start responding to complaints instead of playing
games with the public. I have been promised personally by Chairman Powell that
every complaint would get a response, and yet on a regular basis, thousands upon
thousands of people filing complaints hear nothing. I refer you to our report,
Dereliction of Duty, which documents how the FCC has sat on thousands of
complaints going back almost two years.
While accepting an award during the December 2002 Billboard Music Awards on
Fox, pop-star Cher said, "People have been telling me I'm on the way out
every year, right? So f*ck 'em." How long should it have taken the FCC to
decide if this was indecent? The answer is: quite a while, apparently. It's been
over a year and the FCC has yet to act on it.
The FCC must also be told to stop playing games with the public when it comes
to filing complaints. The Chairman of the FCC assured me personally that it was
absolutely false that the FCC was requiring the public to attach a transcript of
the actual show in question, something that is virtually impossible for a
complainant to have handy at the moment. And yet if you look at the FCC website,
that's exactly what it instructs the public to do.
The FCC must be told to stop playing games with numbers. The FCC reported
that claimed that in the second quarter of 2003 it received only 351 complaints
about broadcast indecency. That was preposterous, simply untrue. In that same
period, PTC members alone filed over 8,000 complaints. The FCC in turn lumped
all of them in one basket and called it one complaint.
The FCC must be told to stop blocking - yes, blocking - complaints, too!
Recently we were told by many of our supporters that their e-mailed complaints
were being returned as "undeliverable." When we looked into this we
were told by a source within the FCC that they were being blocked deliberately.
Third, the FCC must be told to start enforcing the law by attaching
meaningful fines to those who are violating the public trust with deliberate
indecencies on broadcast television. The $27,000 maximum fine is a joke, and
everyone knows it. It is most welcome news, Chairman Upton, that you are
proposing that fine be increased tenfold and that the fines be increased up to
$3 million for continued offenses. But the fact remains that all is for naught
so long as the FCC refuses to levy fines when appropriate. The FCC must be told
in no uncertain terms that it has the obligation to do that to protect the
public airwaves. Moreover, Congress should insist that the FCC fine stations for
each violation. If a shock-jock uses the "s" word ten times on his
show, his station should receive ten fines, not one.
Finally, the FCC must get serious about revoking station licenses for those
who refuse to abide by standards of decency. The use of the public airwaves is
not an entitlement, a right. It is a privilege, and a privilege to be honored.
Rather than giving networks more stations as a reward for their irresponsible
behavior, perhaps the Congress ought to consider steps to reduce the number of
stations allowed for those continuously spitting in the public's face.
I am a father of five who has spent twenty five years trying to shield my
children from offensive messages coming across the airwaves I own. God willing,
I'll be a grandfather some day. Wouldn't it be wonderful if my grandchildren
didn't have to endure such abuse? If the Congress takes the appropriate steps to
force the FCC to do its job, the public trust will be protected and this assault
on decency will come to an end. Only Congress can do that, too.
And if you do, an entire generation of grandparents, parents, and their
children will thank you for it.
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