Broadcasters, Other Media Must Step Up Indecency Efforts, Obama Says
Broadcasters, cable and satellite providers must bolster indecency efforts to reduce inappropriate material on shows kids are likely to watch, said Sen. Obama (D- Ill.). If they don’t step up to the plate, Congress will mandate changes, he said. Speaking after a Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) panel in Washington, Fox TV Networks Pres. Tony Vinciquerra said his firm must do a better job educating lawmakers about what’s been done to combat indecency. A KFF report saying sexual content on TV has surged, also unveiled Wed., comes as lawmakers with oversight of broadcasters have stepped up efforts on indecency. The Senate Commerce Committee, of which Obama isn’t a member, is circulating a draft bill called the Family TV Act that would boost broadcaster penalties more than 15-fold for each instance of obscene material (CD Nov 7 p12).
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“If the industry fails to act… Congress will,” said Obama. Answering a question from a parent in the audience, he said: “I think that this is a conversation that Congress will take on, and if the industry does not give parents like you options, then I think that Congress will move fairly aggressively on this.” Obama, hailed by some including KFF CEO Drew Altman as a 2008 Presidential contender, laid out a 3-point plan that he said would help broadcasters fulfil their “civic obligations.”
There’s a fine line between combating indecency and violating free speech, said panelists including Vinciquerra. Obama also acknowledged those concerns: “Technology will always outpace attempts to completely control information flows, and in some ways that’s a good thing.” First Amendment lawyers have raised questions about a possible push by Commerce Chmn. Stevens (R-Alaska) for cable indecency rules (CD Nov 8 p5). “The problems arise when there is an effort to directly eliminate the material rather than provide information to consumers who might then reject the material,” said Prof. Mark Tushnet, a Constitutional scholar at Georgetown U. The KFF study, conducted by professors at U. of Ariz., said 70% of all shows include “some sexual content.” That’s up from 56% in 1998. During the past 7 years, the average number of sexually-related scenes rose 56% to 5 per hour, it said.
Obama said he supports Stevens’ proposed crackdown on indecency, as well as a Nov. 29 hearing scheduled on the matter. “I am fully behind their efforts,” he said of committee leaders Stevens and Inouye (D-Hawaii). The Senate Commerce Committee’s forum on “decency” seeks ideas to include in a bill, a spokeswoman said. The panel has prepared a draft bill akin to the House bill raising fines on broadcasters -- but the committee hopes to do more, so the panel invited various stakeholders to the forum, committee Staff Dir. Lisa Sutherland told us. Satellite, cable, religious and secular broadcasters, kids’ TV groups, Parents TV Council and others concerned about content will speak. “We haven’t had an opportunity to get into as much detail as we'd like about some of the technologies that are out there,” Sutherland said. For instance, cable will be asked to show how parental controls work. “There may be other ideas out there we haven’t heard about and we're interested in hearing about them,” she said.
Obama wants: (1) Full-screen ratings guides instead of the current thumbnail-size disclaimers used by some broadcasters. (2) Increased obligations for public service announcements (PSAs) during prime time before the DTV transition is complete. (3) A ban on promotions for shows with more mature ratings than the program they're aired on. First Amendment concerns arise “by imposing too many of those kinds of requirements, [which] might crowd out some of the programming content,” said Tushnet: “A lot would depend on the basis on which you induce them to have more PSAs. If you said your license is at risk unless you double the number, that would be more problematic.”
Fox has already implemented many of Obama’s suggestions - it just hasn’t done a good job of letting others know, said Vinciquerra. “We are not doing a good job of educating Capitol Hill… We need to do much better,” he said: “Parental controls are vastly preferable to government controls.” NCTA is also open to holding talks on the Hill about the issue. “Cable networks have also improved the TV ratings system by increasing the size and frequency of the onscreen icon that informs viewers about the content of each program,” a NCTA spokesman said in a prepared statement to us: “We remain committed to maintaining an open dialogue with Congress.” Officials at NAB and DirecTV didn’t comment.
Another study criticized the FCC’s approach to measuring indecency complaints. An 8-fold increase in such complaints last year from 2003 is mostly due to mass e-mail campaigns instead of a surge in the number of programs raising concern, PFF said in a report Wed. “Quiet methodological changes made to the complaint process over the past two years have artificially inflated the number of indecency complaints,” said PFF’s Adam Thierer, making “it difficult to make accurate comparisons over time.”