Parents Television Council sent in reply comments in regard to the FCC proceeding on indecency which among other things make clear that the content watchdog continues to labor under the misconception that its side scored a clear Supreme Court victory.
PTC believes broadcasters are proceeding to “cloud the issue” by attempting to get rid of indecency enforcement entirely. “They are trying to re-litigate the Supreme Court cases that they lost, rather than focus on the FCC’s proposal to focus only on ‘egregious’ instances on indecency,” said PTC’s Tim Winter.
According to Winter, it is a simple matter for the FCC – heed or ignore the will of the public. PTC notes that 102K comments requested the FCC to enforce the rules as they are, a 1,000 to 1 margin in favor of that position.
“The American people have spoken. We call on the FCC to hear and to heed the public’s overwhelming support for the existing broadcast indecency law. And we call on the Commission to reject the proposed change to the law as crafted by its outgoing and now-departed chairman.”
RBR-TVBR observation: The FCC comment database is not a ballot box, and clicking on a canned comment is not a vote.
And as far as it goes, PTC and other like-minded groups have done nothing BUT cloud this issue.
To quickly run through this again, the Supreme Court didn’t grant either side a victory, but it was clearly having trouble with the FCC’s rules, and essentially gave the FCC the chance to come up with new rules that offer some chance to be followed.
100K click-and-send comments is hardly a groundswell in a country of over 300M people. We’d note that 100K pales in comparison to the number of people who cheerfully watch programming that PTC hates; we’d also note that despite PTC’s problems with many programs, rarely are they caught perpetrating actionable indecency.
Some of these indecency activists have gone so far as to claim that the FCC is in bed with Hollywood producers and is doing everything it can to bring foul language and full-frontal nudity to America’s children.
In short, the content nannies are the ones clouding the issue. The FCC is merely revisiting indecency policy in detail, as ordered by the Supreme Court.
