WASHINGTON, DC — A lot has been said about the broadcast of indecent, obscene, and profane words and images since Janet Jackson’s infamous Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction.” Much of what has been said has been accompanied by large dollar fines.Thanks in large part to a deluge of complaints from the ultra-conservative media watchdog group Parents Television Council, then-FCC chairman Michael Powell sprang into action, putting stiff punitive backbone into an organization that had previously allowed the a laissez-faire approach to that marketplace.
So nervous is the mainstream television market about the possibility of Feder Communications Commission (FCC) fines, that the venerable Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) fears for its continued fiscal safety, worried that frank words used in a documentary concerning the history of blues music and another focusing on World War II will land the innovative television producer in deep financial hot water.
Some viewers contend that the FCC’s newfound morality is not being fairly applied and that some crimes against decency as being ignored while others harshly scrutinized.
The most recent case in point stems from the accidental radio and television broadcast of a gross vulgarity uttered by George W. Bush, president of the United States of America, while attending the G-8 Summit held this past July.
The president, presumably believing that his microphone was no longer transmitting, spoke an aside to British Prime Minister Tony Blair concerning then building tensions between Israel and Hezbollah.
Soon, “You see, the thing is, what they need to do is to get Syria, to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s all over,” became one of the most re-broadcast online gaffes in recent history. Untouched by FCC regulations, news networks including CNN played the quote uncensored, while at least one NBC affiliate, which does fall under FCC control, did likewise. During the stories constant retelling, at least one reporter repeated the term while retelling the tale of the G-8 microphone faux passé.
Bush’s use of the common scatological term came merely four months after the FCC had declared it to be one of the most graphic, explicit, vulgar, and socially unacceptable words referring to excretion available to speakers of the English language, and therefore appropriate for financial penalties if uttered even once on television or radio.
In spite of the speaker’s status, many Americans found the president’s choice of words deeply offensive, and at least a dozen of them have filed complaints with the FCC, requiring sanctions against stations that played unedited versions of the quote, whose staff repeated the word while on air, or that repeated the quote with “shit” bleeped out.
Due to an FCC no-comment policy regarding enforcement matters and a lack of response to emails and phone calls sent by MarketWatch.com from stations that may have been involved, it is unknown whether or not a letter of inquiry had been sent. Such letters re the first step in formal investigations of this nature.
The complaints come at a time during which the FCC has announced that it will not impose fines unless stations result in complaints. This past June, President Bush signed a law that raised the average penalty ten fold from $32,000 to $325,000 per violation.
An FCC investigation of Bush’s down-home everyman phraseology could be awkward for the Republican-heavy agency, many members of whom have the president to thank for their jobs. A refusal to investigate could look suspicious given its previous aggression toward even the most benign of offenders.
