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.'"
3.6 million? (Score:2, Interesting)
btw, why is this rights "online"?
Logic go backwards (Score:4, Interesting)
So, pornography is just fine, but seeing an episode of T.V. that happens to make an allusion to sex is simply too much?
Re:Link to clip (Score:5, Interesting)
Having watched the clip, I could sort of see a complaint about indecency (assuming that such are ever justified). I just wouldn't accept that the indeceny is in depicting a rather wild party of underage people. Maybe it was just the resolution of the clip, but I would swear I saw some nipples at one point, which seems to fall under current indecency standards.
Whether the Parents Television Council cares to accept it or not, drunken underage parties happen. At said parties underage people often engage in sex. As this seems to have been part of the story, I can understand why it was depicted. Yes, it probably rubs many people the wrong way, since they wish to ignore reality; sorry, but the right to not be offended still isn't in the US Constitution anywhere.
Re:3.6 million? (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, if something like this appens, 3.6 million is like a slap on the wrist. Seriously, that is nothing for the big networks.
You missed the point. The point was that there should be no fine at all.
18 (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:sex is immoral (Score:5, Interesting)
Man, the Dutch are so far ahead of us it's not funny.
Re:3.6 million? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Link to clip (Score:5, Interesting)
When will we have 'uncensored' Tv ? (Score:4, Interesting)
We need a workaround for the FCC. Why not have local rules instead of national.
We need to 'RETAKE' our airwaves from the rightwing.
FCC overstepping its legal boundaries? (Score:4, Interesting)
The old money in the US is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Frankly, it would appear, the Europeans had the right idea with these whack-jobs.
Re:Link to clip (Score:2, Interesting)
Regardless of the fact that it happens in real life where such things happen at parties, I don't think it's necessary to show everyone the gory (depicted) details. Just as an example, and it's the only one I can think of but to illustrate a point I'll use it. Have you ever really seen someone get killed? In real life or on video? I can tell you I have and it's not a pretty sight. It's raw and definitely has an emotional tug to it. In video it's more of a complete stun when it happen, you just can't explain it. If you ever see it in person, most people go into some form of shock immediately especially if they're not expecting it. they turn the corner and bam, you watch a couple of guys empty a clip into someone and you just stand there as if something has completely siezed your will to move.
Talking about orgys. To me it's the same thing. Yes they happen and sexuality is a part of us, that's not in debate. (insert liberal rhetoric here) But the point I'm making deals with decades of research into human development and maturity. Most people don't want to see raw imagery of this type and in fact the percentage of these kinds of things happening is very low overall. People want to feel good and usually this is the case in a human healthy human being so they watch a thriller, or a comedy, an action flick etc.
I may be wrong to someone's opinion here but that's life.
It'd be nice if it worked tho... (Score:1, Interesting)
I have 2 young children (yes, I do my parent job - not just put them in front of the TV), so I figured I'd lock the 18yo+ stuff, only to find out lots of normal and very boring shows were blocked (nearly half the time you'd change channel).
Programs like Dora the explorer are rated 14+ or such (more something like my 6yo likes). And then on "general public" rated stuff, you see ads for shows whose ads are somewhat disturbing even for adults (and I'm not too sensitive; talking about graphic physical violence and ads for shows called "autopsy" and such).
You can't rely on that thing to block anything, unless you don't mind it blocking all channels... The only way I can let the kids change channels is by having bought a "weemote" remote, that only works on some safe channels like Treehouse and such.
I wish they'd gimme my half penny back for the V-chip, it's an absolute waste of time and money - borderline false advertizing (it doesn't deliver).
Re:3.6 million? (Score:2, Interesting)
Nobody can come up with a list ahead of time, but you can be sure that if there's something that should have been on it, you'll be sued over it. This is why these laws are a bad idea. We might as well erase all our laws and just go with "if you do bad things we'll put you in jail for a while" and let lawyers deal with "bad" "things" "we" "jail" and "while" later.
Re:sex is immoral (Off-topic) (Score:5, Interesting)
But don't delude yourself, your utopia is not the norm. I'll keep it real short and simple. When I met my accountant to help me out of some tax problems some years back, he had a little talk to me about marriage and divorce. He said marriage can be about a lot of things, true love, insecurity, combining efforts, companionship, social status, etc. but he made it clear on no uncertain terms that divorce was always about money. He probably has the right position in our society to make the observation, being an accountant and all. I think he's right.
Re:sex is immoral (Off-topic) (Score:4, Interesting)
Little note: Marriage has nothign to do with love it started as a property contract between a man and the family of a girl. It's shifted a bit over the last 200 years (yes the chaneg was very recent). Even now it's more about propperty then about love since the state doens't care if you love the one you marry.
Re:What I don't Understand (Score:1, Interesting)
IMDB has some trivia about the movie
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372588/trivia [imdb.com]
They shouldn't pay it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Tell them they're not paying the fine. Also tell them they're not giving up their licence and they're going to keep broadcasting also...what are they going to do about it? Send in the FCC cops to arrest thousands of people and affiliates across the country? If ALL the networks had any balls, they would stand up to these idiots and say "you only have power because we say you have power". If they were all to ignore the FCC, what would happen?
Of course, this is only a pipe dream and CBS will cave totally and pay the fine. So that the totally unchecked power of the FCC will continue on.
Re:sex is immoral (Off-topic) (Score:4, Interesting)
If I say I'll love my girlfriend for the rest of my life then I would expect to be taken as being honest, not be required to go through a marriage ceremony to "prove" it.
My parents' marriage broke-up, my paternal grandparents were divorced, and my maternal grandparents damned well ought to have been divorced if the catholic church would only allow it. Marriage proves nothing, and requiring it is as much of an insult as requiring a pre-nuptual agreement would be.
(Just glad that my girlfriend feels the same way)
Got to love the difference between EU and US (Score:3, Interesting)
The extremely tame clip would barely register here. Not when a program during the daytime aimed squarely at kids has full frontal nudity in it.
But don't worry, with dutch parties like CDA (Christian Dicks & Assholdes) we will soon have the same puritan system as the good old US of A.
What happened to the idea of free speech anyway?
Re:sex is immoral (Off-topic) (Score:2, Interesting)
Marriage is the mechanism a culture uses to force it's people to actually take care of their kids. That's it, plain and simple.
No seriously, love, happieness, little prancing fairies, unicorns, and rainbows are nice, but at the real core of it, that's not what it's about.
Somewhere, way back at the dawn of Man, it was like this:
Dude: "I wanna have sex with you",
Chick: "yeah that dosen't sound too bad"
Parents: "WTF? I just finished raising your little asses, and I ain't gonna take care of the fruit of your loins"
end result, the parents meet with the tribal elders, and they come up with a contract that says:
"okay, if you're gonna have sex, you're gonna stay together and deal with the little screaming bundles of joy that result, if you don't there will be severe penalties
So after that, a lot of dudes were like "yyyeah, I just wanna hit it and quit it
So the culture had to start selling it to the girls as a pre-requisite for getting in of the pants. That's when religion got a hold of it, I'm sure, and people started damning their eternal souls as a result of their reproductive drive. Also probably why cultures started elaborate marriage ceremonies, where the woman is made into "royalty for a day"
In order for any civilization to survive, it's children must be raised in a stable, loving environment. I'm talking in an evolutionary since here, not in some sort of fundamentalist since. This is why every successfull culture (by which I mean long lived ones) provides for some sort of marriage contract/ceremony, whatever.
It's to make sure the kids are taken care of, not that YOU are taken care of.
Which is why I think gay marriage should be a pre-requisite for gay adoption.
Re:FCC overstepping its legal boundaries? (Score:2, Interesting)
So what is a bureaucrat to do? How about going the other direction - enforcing the hell out of the regulations. If the FCC keeps upping the ante with ever larger fines, they can appease Congress and inevitably SOMEONE is going to push back. (Personally, I think they were hoping Infinity would push back over the Howard Stern fine)
If SCOTUS overturns the rules, the FCC can then wash their hands of being the Morality Police and throw it back on Congress.