pudge's Journal: Honey, MTV Is Showing Strippers Again, Call the Cops

I couldn't make this up if I tried.

I think we need to be realistic. We cannot expect five political appointees at the FCC to spend their time watching TV and trying to figure out what words are dirty, and trying to do the jobs such as investigating the payola paid by the government to journalists to adopt a government line. They can't be asked to investigate whether some alleged male escort has obtained a White House press pass under false pretenses. They can't do the job of policing the media that the congressman and the Senate actually think ought to be done.

So my view, with all due respect to the congressman, is we ought to give a police job to the police. We ask the local police to enforce community standards for obscenity. We ask the police to enforce standards against fraud. We ought to have local police and local communities and the FBI take on the job of protecting our country from inappropriate content.

-- Reed Hundt, former chairman of the FCC from 1993-97

Well that's the point isn't it?

[turg]

If it needs to be policed, the police need to do it, right? If calling the police is ridiculous, then it doesn't need to be done.

Re:Well that's the point isn't it?

[johndiii]

Hmm, a new national organization - the Nudity Police. Quies custodiet ipsos custodies? Hope I got that right. It's late.

Re:Well that's the point isn't it?

[pudge]

That's not true. No one is claiming that it violated the law, that a crime was committed. The public airwaves belong to the people, and are run by Congress. Part of the process of getting a license to broadcast is agreement to the rules laid out by the FCC, and agreement to pay fines if so levied, or risk losing your license.

Really, this is a civil case. No one can go to jail or be charged with a felony for showing boobs on TV, you just have to comply with the terms of the license or lose it. The poli

Re:Well that's the point isn't it?

[turg]

Well, in any case, if you're going to prosecute all the boobs on TV :-) you need some larger group of officers/investigators to prosecute it, no? What I read as Mr. Hundt's point is just that the way things are currently set up, the FCC doesn't have the resources to do what it's being asked to do on this issue, and that it would take a larger group of people with authority to prosecute.

Re:Well that's the point isn't it?

[pudge]

I understood that point, and it is a reasonable, but I saw no sarcasm in him when went from that to saying the police should do it (I was watching it on TV).

If he was being sarcastic, he has a poor way of showing it.

Re:Well that's the point isn't it?

[turg]

Seems like a typical political gambit.

You don't have the resources. You say it's somebody else's job. They freak out. You get the resources.

Re:Well that's the point isn't it?

[pudge]

If so, that's poor too. No one is going to give the FCC the money to do this. The people get freaked out when the FCC exercises its authority in the limited way it does now.

it's pretty bad...

[capoccia]

it's pretty bad when the fcc commissioner doesn't understand his own role. why did he take the job to run a federal agency if he fundamentally disagrees with the whole idea of federalization?

Offtopic?

[kikta]

...trying to do the jobs such as investigating the payola paid by the government to journalists to adopt a government line. They can't be asked to investigate whether some alleged male escort has obtained a White House press pass under false pretenses.

I just love how he throws in these blatantly political barbs that have absolutely no bearing on his main point. If he were online, he'd be modded offtopic. This kind of obnoxious grandstanding is a clear desperation move.

As for the rest of it, you'd think