FCC Levies Record Indecency Fine 577
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "The FCC proposed a record $3.6 million fine against a single TV show, penalizing CBS and its affiliates for an episode of 'Without a Trace' that suggested a teenage sexual orgy, in the first batch of indecency fines proposed in more than a year, the Wall Street Journal reports. 'Overall, the FCC's action didn't provide a broad sweeping vision for broadcasters about what is appropriate for television,' the WSJ says. 'Notably, the FCC backed away from an effort to impose higher fines by holding all network affiliates responsible for a broadcast, instead of just the stations that had been flagged by a viewer in a complaint.'"
Whoa.. (Score:3, Insightful)
What about shows like Family Guy which have untold amounts of adult-oriented innuendo and jokes??! I can't see this as a legitimate endeavour whatsoever...
USA: the land of the free? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can the USA still be regarded as the land of the free, where any citizen san say whatever they like?
Talking of indecency, why don't the authorities shut down the Jerry Springer Show? I have seen a level of indecency I'd never imagined! Can anyone figure how a mother could compete with a daughter for a man? I watched on such episode on Jerry Springer. To say the truth, I almost fell sick!
I guess it's all about the money.
And it's a rather lame show, too. (Score:2, Insightful)
You now have CSI.
Now take CSI, and remove all credibility, depth, and attempts at grounding in real-world accuracy that's still left.
You now have Without a Trace.
This already tame and formulaic show will, I'm quite certain, become even more tame and formulaic in the wake of this fine; its one positive feature, it's occasional tendency to take some kind of sensitive or topical issue and attempt to tackle it, even if ineptly, will now disappear in fear that they'll cross the line and get fined again.
Remember back in the good 'ol 1950s, when cop shows were like Dragnet, and criminals and druggies and whatnot never showed up unless they were cartoonish, blue-faced mockeries? Now that's the kind of television the Bush executive wants to see more of!
Re:sex is immoral (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:sex is immoral (Score:2, Insightful)
The person to write to is Michael Copps, since he's been leading the charge, since the Janet Jackson "malfunction".
anon
PS. He's a Democrat. Hope that dose of reality doesn't taint your world view.
Re:USA: the land of the free? (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is more indecent? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:3.6 million? (Score:5, Insightful)
We're sitting in a country where people try laws like this over and over, against the internet, against computer games, against music, against movies... so this is a taste of what our future rights online hold for us should the government succeed in having a post-facto Miller Test type law regarding content on the internet.
Re:Link to clip (Score:4, Insightful)
V-chip? (Score:5, Insightful)
So that should cover the "somebody think of the children" crowd. Beyond that, if you don't like what they are showing, don't watch their show/network. Last I checked, "having what you want on T.V" wasn't one of those inalienable rights from the constitution.
Fuck indecency rules (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't really a free speech issue. It's a "why is America so full of whiny-ass bitches who thing the whole world ought to cater exclusively to them" issue.
Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Makes me wonder... why are the Americans thinking of invading Iran? The two countries are equally fucked up in my humble mind, about the same attitudes toward "indecency".
Ayatollah Bush of the Intelligent Design priesthood, the leader of the world, mwahhahhahha!
Blasphemy! (Score:1, Insightful)
It seems to me that there is an inordinate amount of "for your own good" pretection going on here. I believe that the networks should finally grab their b@lls up off the shelves and simply refuse to pay the fines, en-mass.
Maybe we should all start filing indecency complaints against tampon commercials.
$1 would be too much. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is ridiculous.
Why didn't they fine the news media? (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember a few years ago, a story about an odd occurrence in an upper-class neighborhood. For some unexplained reason, a significant number of teens (some kind of young) started showing up at doctors' offices to report symptoms characteristic of at least one STD- mostly the same one. They thought it was kind of strange that it would not only happen to so many within a small geographic area, but within such a short period of time. After somes investigation, it was dicovered that these kids were doing exactly what the show suggested - having sex parties/orgies while parents weren't around to supervise. Oh, the horror. I'm not sure what value the FCC sees in burying these kinds of issues by sweeping them under a carpet of fines. Oh that's right...if people don't hear about it, that must mean that it's simply not happening.
If China censors indecent material it's communism, (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm - gotta start watching that show (Score:5, Insightful)
Since the USA already has a violence problem, should we continue to show people being blown up/shot at, or participating in an orgy? I vote for the later, since I'd rather be invited to an orgy, than be shot.
Re:The Clip in Question (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:good for the series I'd say (Score:2, Insightful)
Go slashdot hoard!
The clip (illegally?) hosted by them [parentstv.org]
Re:What I don't Understand (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What I don't Understand (Score:4, Insightful)
So turn the channel. Or monitor your kids' viewing habits more closely. Or, better yet, trash the TV.
These types of fines are just a way for the FCC Morality Police to justify their existence.
Re:Just saw this (Score:2, Insightful)
Give me a break.
Re:Logic go backwards (Score:3, Insightful)
You forgot to add the all important part--"at the moment."
Re:Just saw this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:sex is immoral (Score:5, Insightful)
On Wednesday, President Bush announced his intention to nominate Deborah Taylor Tate and Michael Joseph Copps to serve as commissioners on the Federal Communications Commission.
So yes, we can actually thank Bush personally.
CSI (Score:3, Insightful)
And they wonder why this country is messed up...
seriously (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Morality (Score:3, Insightful)
Hang on, hang on, hang ON!.... (Score:2, Insightful)
A portayal of a group of young people having a pleasant and consenting interaction with each other? Bad! Evil! Fine them billions! Riiiiiigh-T.
So violence on TV? Good. War based on lies? Good. Innocent lives being killed for Bush and his rich friends? Really good. Consenting sex? BAD.
Re:sex is immoral (Score:5, Insightful)
Fundamentalists of any stripe are a problem in society.
Fundamentalists with power are the root of dictatorships, police states, and government control.
Fundamentalists are people who made a decision a long time ago and stopped thinking about the possibility that they could be wrong.
The decisions made so long ago are rarely based on a thorough education or understanding of the material. Most of the time it's rote and ritual, and damnation for those who question "the way" -- the same as any cult.
Re:Which is more indecent? (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as primetime TV is concerned, Violence is ok, Sex is evil. We can thank the moral majority for that. Ward and June Cleaver sleeping in separate beds, Homosexuality not existing until the 1970's (soap), open homosexuality not being addressed until the 1990's (roseanne, ellen). No sir, we can't ever imply that people have sex, because that's evil and naughty. In fact, we need standards that keep filth like sex off of the tube.
But violence is a-ok. Cop shows can show murders and beatings because "that sort of thing happens all the time" or "that's the way it is." It's gritty, "life on the street" sorts of things. Drug abuse, murder, beatings, that's cool. That happens all the time, but God forbid we show a boobie. Because people don't have sex.
Which leads us down the path we're on now. TV shows cannot show sex, but they can show violence. So how to the writers skirt that little detail? SHOW VIOLENT SEX! Brutal Rape! Orgies! Kinky prostitutes being beaten do death by druggies!
I'm no expert on sex, but I think men and women (or two men. Or two women.) tend to have have normal (or comparitively normal) sex more often than people get raped, murdered, or skinned by a serial killer after freaky sex rituals. But we can't show that on tv. We've got to show violent sex.
Free Society? (Score:5, Insightful)
By the way, the FCC was established to govern the FREQUENCIES that over-the-air broadcasts and electrical devices use. In today's age of cable and satellite, the FCC should be little more than a VERY small government organization that tries to make sure that your cell phone doesn't interfere with your TV set, and that the government can jam any consumer electronic device they choose. They should not be involved, in any way, in censorship, broadcast licensing blackmail or fining anyone for content.
I am an American, and I'm ashamed at what our society and government have become.
Re:sex is immoral (Score:2, Insightful)
I object. (Score:2, Insightful)
You act like there was no way for the witter to write a underage sexual orgy without resorting in softcore pornography. The truth is, the witter made the choice to illustrate it that way. There are also many places for softcore porn writers to do their thing, like Cinemax pretty much all the time.
This is simply another producer setting aside standards to increase viewership. They wanted to push the bar; they should take the personal responsibility for doing so.
What's that hammering sound? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes! I was thinking about this other day... (Score:5, Insightful)
No one ever mentions the V-Chip anymore because it's not their own viewing habits that concern them, but their neighbor's.
Re:Link to clip (Score:5, Insightful)
How Strange some people can't change channels (Score:3, Insightful)
Not yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:sex is immoral (Off-topic) (Score:5, Insightful)
Please forgive me for the off-topic post. The subject came up via the A.C. and I honestly feel that few men consider the implications of choices like this. Thankfully I have not had to learn any of the above the hard way; I was fortunate enough to be able to learn this by simple observation. Remember guys, if she really loves you and it really is "always and forever," she will have no problem signing that prenup.
Re:Morality (Score:4, Insightful)
Clearly fiction (Score:1, Insightful)
Most teenagers can't get past their own feelings of inadequacy, much less participate in an orgy.
And, if it was supposed to depict Gen-Y and beyond - I doubt it would have gotten past the "selfish whining" stage if it had been scripted true to life.
Personally, I don't envy them: They may be young, but, they've been abused by the public indoctrination system here in the US.
They don't think, and actually cannot: They've not been taught how to do so, by either their parents, nor the public education system that ostensibly is supposed to create knowledgeable, aware citizens.
They can't think, can't reason - Hell, they're semi-literate, at best - you've read their posts here: The best of them are clueless - the rest are embarassing.
But, they sure can point and click, which is a good thing - that means that they are equipped to handle Windows, Linux and OS X - they're all basically the same at the level at which they can manipulate them anyway.
PBS station fined for Documentary (Score:4, Insightful)
KCSM-TV, a San Mateo, CA Community College District noncommercial station was fined $15,000 for airing an episode of the Emmy-award-winning Martin Scorsese-produced documentary "The Blues." In it, a hip-hop musician says "I'll buy some [expletive].. This is the kind of [expletive] I buy!"
For a station their size, $15,000 is a major hit!
Re:When will we have 'uncensored' Tv ? (Score:3, Insightful)
We already have that! It's called the internet.
Or cable television if you actually pay for content.
Re:Link to clip (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmm - gotta start watching that show (Score:3, Insightful)
You give no evidence to support either of these claims, which is not surprising because no evidence exists. It is a matter of hot debate as to whether or not violent images encourage violent actions, or sublimate them. It is likewise indeterminant whether explicit sexual depictions encourage or sublimate sexual actions.
To blandly make the assertions you do lets the rest of us know your opinions, but it contributes nothing to the debate because it does not significantly increase our knowledge of the way the world actually is.
One empirical fact that we do have is that on cable and satellite TV you can see damn near anything, and 85% of American homes have one or the other. This was not true thirty years ago. Yet the murder rate (ignoring medical improvements that have actually reduced the rate) is pretty much the same today as it was in 1976, in the 8 - 10 homicides per 100,000 population (in the U.S.) The big rise occurred between 1965 and 1971, long before you could watch Reservoir Dogs on cable.
Likewise, "Between 1990 and 2000, the national teen pregnancy rate fell 27 percent, from 117 to 84.5 pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15-19" (from Planned Parenthood--the drop was mostly due to better educated kids using birth control, but also partly due to a decrease in sexual activity on the part of teens.) And all that while cable TV was poluting the minds of youngsters with depictions of teenage orgies that they would never have any knowledge of otherwise.
Or would they?
Teenagers do talk to each other about sex, sometimes. And wild parties with lots of sex are something they do. I know a guy who grew up in rural Manitoba (on the Canadian prairies) in the early 70's in a town where teen orgies happened. What else do you do on a Friday night when you're sixteen and as far from the bright centre of the universe as you can get?
So the macro-statistics would indicate that violent crimes and sexual activity by teenagers is uncorrelated with cable-TV penetration.
Ergo, anyone wanting to make a case that depictions of violent or sexual behaviour actually leads to violent or sexual behaviour has an uphill battle if they are to move beyond the epistemologically vacuous "it just makes sense that..." view.
Re:Morality (Score:5, Insightful)
The terms "son" and "daughter" apply to everyone last time I checked my biology textbook. While I understand that parents (rightly) have a strong emotional bond with their children, using those terms in this context simply serves to have emotional response override reason in a debate of ideas.
Re:3.6 million? (Score:5, Insightful)
So basically they showed the inside of a club?
Re:Morality (Score:3, Insightful)
I know I'm not typical, but I'm also not alone in the way of being responsible and prepared for sex at a young age. (NOTE: I'm NOT advocating paedophilia. I believe that sexual relationships before the age of consent should be between individuals within two years of each other in order to prevent paedohiles from having an excuse for their perversion.) There are plenty of young people who ARE ready to handle sex in a mature fashion. Our arbitrary "moral" codes do them a disservice because they either fear that they will be punished for what they are doing and go about it without the proper precautions, or they don't want to talk to anyone about what they are feeling because they don't want to be labelled "immoral". I think people who think that ALL teens are unprepared for sex aren't firing on all cylinders. I think people who think that keeping kids from seeing ANY kind of sexual material is helpful are just stupid.
Re:sex is immoral (Off-topic) (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't get a prenump, you're a...well you know what I mean. These people who got married thought they met their lifetime partner, just like you. You just got lucky.
Assuming you're someone else here, when your wife cleans you out of half of the stuff you own, plus a car and the summer house, you'd be asking yourself how you could be so stupid.
We all want the dream, but that doesn't mean you can't take a little dose of reality along with it.
Re:Hmm - gotta start watching that show (Score:2, Insightful)
My wife and I have had an ongoing discussion about this issue for quite sometime and we came (pun?) to the same conclusion. When deciding which to show our children we opted for less restrictions on sex. It just stands to reason that people in our country are quite strange in their sex fear.
Our parents opted for education over oppressive and nosensical censorship. At least my mother did. My father side of the family was aghast during any part of a show that showed the barest hint of flesh and us children were chased out of the room during these scenes. As a kid all that I thought was, "Lame!" My wife's mother's side was similarly victorian in their dispostion. Ironic?
By having both points of view I had the right, nay the oportunity, to decide for myself which made more sense to me - what could I handle? That was the question. Letting censors pander to this or that group leads to one group being unhappy with an issue that should be decided by the individual.
During our formative teenage years my wife's stepmom always said, "I would rather have you watch sex that violence because sex is natural and violence is not." An arguable position, but still I agree with the gist of her message.
Good luck to all the parents out there with this one. Seems a no brainer.
Re:Which is more indecent? (Score:5, Insightful)
They used to sleep in the same bed and as a kid, I thought nothing of it.
Then some people started screaming "ZOMG teh h0m05!!11eleven"
Bert and Ernie then got separate beds.
Not good enough.
Bert and Ernie then got separate rooms.
Okay, finally they're not gay.
The fact is that kids don't think about that stuff, unless some adult points to it and says "See those two men? They're living in sin." Or some other such bullshit. Ultimately, suppressing/repressing stuff like sexuality just creates groups of sexually disfunctional people.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:sex is immoral (Off-topic) (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:sex is immoral (Off-topic) (Score:3, Insightful)
As a sidenote, I really don't care much about money. If the marriage did fall apart and I had to pay out for the kid and split belonings, it would be painful but not because of the money. Simply because of the emotional toll. NO money in the world can soothe a broken heart. The only thing that can break my heart is the loss of my family. The impact on any future relationships would be annoying, certainly. But I think that would be overcome if the new partner really loved me as I love someone: completely and without limit or fear. To actually get to that point, we'd have to seriously change in different directions. My wife would have to become a raving Republican (can't ever see that happening) and I'd have to do the same (no chance of that without severe brain damage
For me a pre-nup is kind of a vulgar thing. You are counting on getting a divorce at some point. It's like the arms race between Russia and the US in the Cold War Era. You'd never sleep well at night. Unless... you really don't have a stronger emotional attachment to your spouse than to your money. I guess I should also say, that if a pre-nup works for two people and neither is offended by it, then I guess it's OK for them. But I really can't understand the kind of mind that actually feels good about that sort of thing.
Re:What I don't Understand (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet like most Slashdot posters parroting this sentiment, you probably stood in line for hours to see Anakin get his limbs graphically sliced off and dunked in lava.
Re:3.6 million? (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess I don't see any reason this belonged on prime time TV. It really had no value and nothing redeeming. It seemed like a desperate plea for ratings and backfired. Put the show on 2 hours later, and I'd agree with you.
Re:Free Society? (Score:1, Insightful)
Tricky Congresspeople... (Score:3, Insightful)
No problem, we'll just establish a separate entity called the Federal Communications Commission to do our dirty work!
No person shall ... be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;...
No problem, we'll just make it an administrative fine -- no trial necessary!
If the Bill of Rights were proposed on the floor of Congress today, it would be: 1) excoriated as too liberal, 2) vetoed by the President (if, by some miracle, it passed both Houses of Congress), and 3) ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court as insufficiently respectful of the government's right to secrecy and duty of national security.
So much for "protecting and defending the Constitution".
Re:sex is immoral (Off-topic) (Score:0, Insightful)
You dumb fuck.
> I married my wife because I love her and she did the same with me. I don't make much money and she doesn't care. We live comfortably enough, have a great sex life and have made it to our late 30s and early 40s with only one kid (in 2004 and planned in advance) in 16 years of sex. But outside of the sex we love to actually BE with each other.
Correction. You lucky dumb fucks.
Assume you've fallen in love with Miss Right. Your brain's so clouded with oxytocin and other junk that you can't think straight -- so when she says it's about love, not money, you believe her.
Assume 5% of females are lying when they say this. (My data set [myself, friends, co-workers male and two females] is limited, but strongly suggests that the real number is bigger than 5% with a probability of over 30%).
But let's go with 5%. Would you play Russian Roulette? Even with only one bullet and 20 chambers?
Your mileage may vary, but I choose to heed the Wisdom of the Bastard Son of Admiral Ackbar and Eddie Murphy:
"I know a muthafukkin' trap when I see one!"
I've been offered sex. I've been offered sex with women I trust. I turned it the fuck down. Better things to do with my time and money.
Re:sex is immoral (Off-topic) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:sex is immoral (Off-topic) (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, she will - and justifiably, IMHO, because a pre-nup is demonstration of a lack of trust (in either the other party or themselves). Without trust, a relationship will not work.
While I certainly agree with your sentiments regarding the economical and statistical realities of marriage and divorce, and that men in particular should think long and hard about financial consequences before tying the knot, from a relationship perspective, if you think you need a pre-nup then you shouldn't be getting married.
Unless, of course, you're getting married for reasons independent of an emotional relationship, in which case a pre-nup is simply another aspect of the paperwork.
The solution is overflow (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's organize a loosely coordinated network that would, for every given TV programme, send, say, some 120 complaints or so. Each sender sould not sent more than 1 complaint per week, in order to sufficiently randomize the sample; the idea is that the onslaught of complaints coming from all over the place will overwhelm the FCC complaint-reception system, thus diluting the whole effot by those right wingnuts.
Re:Morality (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Which is more indecent? (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason for this is very simple. Showing violence on TV breeds fear and paranoia, and afraid paranoid people are easy to control and buy things to try and distract themselves from what is bothering them. People having sex just lock themselves in a room and forget about any of the crap which the modern world tries to fill our heads with. Content people don't consume.
Re:The Show Aired at 9:00 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bush? Remeber Tipper? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's see, Tipper Gore did some stuff as a private citizen, and years later when her husband ran for President, it was definitely an issue that gave people concern about his position on censorship.
Now members of the Bush administration, appointed by Bush, are doing stuff in their official capacities, and you object if we blame "the Bush administration"?
I mean, if people are brining this up in an irrelevant attempt to defend a poitical opponent of Laura Bush 20 years from now, feel free to tell them what I will now tell you:
The last time I heard something that moronicly weak, it was a Twisted Sister album.
Re:sex is immoral (getting waaaaay Off-topic) (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:sex is immoral (Score:5, Insightful)
Libertarians are free-market fundamentalists who want everyone to be slave to the rich rather than the government. In a libertarian utopia, nothing will stop those with money from trampling your rights as much as they want, only the government (which at least in theory has some obligations to you) is not allowed to do so.
Trying to solve every problem with the same tool - free market - is the mark of a fundamentalist. Do you honestly think that free-market fundamentalism is any different from christian fundamentalism or islamist fundamentalism or communist fundamentalism ? It isn't.
In a libertarian utopia, the poor will starve in the streets since there is no social security to feed them. The companies will happily form cartels since the government doesn't have the power to stop them. Your employment contract will force you to spend your "free" time by guarding your place of employment - and no, you cannot simply refuse to sign, since nothing stops the cartel from agreeing that every potential employer will require such conditions. Public libraries will cease to function, since they are funded by the state - if you can't pay for all the information you want or need, too bad.
Libertarian utopia is a heaven for the rich, since nothing limits their ability to exercise power over everyone else anymore. It is a hell to everyone else, since nothing limits the ability of the rich to trample on them anymore.
There's a reason why communism was born. That reason is that life for a worker during the unfettered capitalism of industrial revolution was a living hell, with 16-hour work days, child labor, and the absolute lack of any kind of safety regulations leading to regular mutilation of machine operators, after which they would simply be thrown out to starve and replaced with new victims. Compared to that, the Soviet Union really was a workers paradise, where you at least had to be sent to Siberia before the hell would begin. By trying to repeal all labor laws (since they interfere with their free market utopia), the libertarians are working for the return of those conditions.
Don't vote libertarian, unless you are filthy rich. You are going to hate to live under them otherwise.
Ruled by fucking madmen (Score:4, Insightful)
But: What kind of crack does your government smoke to put up a law against "indecency" and regulators who think this is "indecent"?
Grow up. Overthrow your government.
Re:sex is immoral (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:sex is immoral (Score:3, Insightful)
The libertarian abolishment of welfare is stated on the partys website (http://www.lp.org/article_85.shtml [lp.org]) - the poor starving on the streets follows logically from this. The same page talks about "economic freedom" and "slashing bureaucratic regulation of business", and without such regulations, what is stopping cartels from forming ? And nasty employment contracts are also the natural result of lack of such regulation.
Various Slashdot posters also keep on touting abolishment of taxes (and, logically, all tax-funded functions) and any kind of government control of economy in the name of libertarianism.
The part of how and why communism was born you can check yourself from history books.
Re:sex is immoral (Off-topic) (Score:3, Insightful)