i'm cooking the veggies and valuing myself! (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
themeletor) wrote2005-02-17 09:21 am
themeletor) wrote2005-02-17 09:21 am
Your Friendly Neighborhood Alarmist
Well I've found a few interesting things this morning news-alert-wise...
New York Times: Remember "Postcards From Buster"? Well...
Conservatives have complained [...] about a recent children's program featuring a rabbit named Buster who visited a pair of lesbian parents.
After Education Secretary Margaret Spellings threatened to retract financing for that program - a controversy that some called Bustergate - Ms. Mitchell decided not to distribute it.
February 17, 2005
Conservatives and Rivals Press a Struggling PBS
By JOHN TIERNEY and JACQUES STEINBERG
WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 - It was no accident that PBS found itself turning to Elmo, the popular "Sesame Street" character, to lobby on Capitol Hill this week. There were not many options.
Public television is suffering from an identity crisis, executives inside the Public Broadcasting Service and outsiders say, and it goes far deeper than the announcement by Pat Mitchell that she would step down next year as the beleaguered network's president.
Some public television executives said that running PBS was a thankless job, and that managing a far-flung network composed of independent fiefs around the country was a particularly daunting assignment. They also said they were facing larger issues that would challenge any executive, like increased competition from the cable industry.
Corporate underwriters have been less willing to finance PBS programs, which has left the network increasingly dependent on Washington, where Republicans criticize its programming as elitist and liberal.
The network has also struggled to develop popular new shows.
"The biggest problem we've got is the structure we've got," Alberto Ibarguen, the chairman of PBS and the publisher of The Miami Herald, said in an interview yesterday. "It assumes a lot of government funding, continuing heavy levels of corporate image advertising and no competition. But in the world we're in - the world of increased cable competition, less and less government funding and cutbacks in corporate image advertising - it's a significant problem if that's your business model."
Mr. Ibarguen added: "The risk is the tighter your budgets get, the less you can afford to fail. If you can't afford to fail, you can't afford to take risks."
Among the challenges that Ms. Mitchell has confronted is a trend, lasting nearly a decade, in which corporations have scaled back on the so-called "image advertising" through which they had once financed programs like "Masterpiece Theater." According to PBS's financial statements, revenues drawn from program underwriting - which are paid directly to producers, but catalogued by PBS - reached a five-year peak of $221.9 million in 2001, dropped to $179.4 million in 2003, and rebounded slightly to $184.3 million last year.
PBS hopes to relieve some of the pressure by creating a huge endowment from the proceeds of reselling the spectrum used by its stations when they trade their current broadcast positions for new high-definition stations later in the decade. But that will take persuading the same Congressional and administration officials who have objected to its programming.
Conservatives have complained about Bill Moyers's news program (he has since retired from it) and about a recent children's program featuring a rabbit named Buster who visited a pair of lesbian parents.
After Education Secretary Margaret Spellings threatened to retract financing for that program - a controversy that some called Bustergate - Ms. Mitchell decided not to distribute it.
In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Mitchell, 62, said she had felt no pressure, either from inside her board or outside of PBS, to step aside.
She also said she had not been personally pressured to change programming by Republicans at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides federal money to the system. But she said her programmers had worked with their counterparts at the corporation, which is led by White House appointees, in developing several new shows, including a talk show for the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson.
"They certainly want to make sure we are providing a balanced schedule," she said. "We believe we are. We check that with the people we report to - our member stations and the American public."
One high-level executive at PBS headquarters in Washington, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation for PBS, said new managers at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting had been concerned about a perceived liberal bias at PBS as well as difficulties in fund-raising.
"The thing to remember with public broadcasting is that everything is steered by the money," the executive said. "What used to be a unique thing is now in this competitive environment and has to do whatever it can to survive, which means bending in a way it used to never bend."
Now that 85 percent of Americans subscribe to cable or satellite television, PBS's children shows, historical dramas and wildlife documentaries face competitors like the History Channel, Discovery, A & E, the National Geographic Channel, BBC America, Nickelodeon, and The Learning Channel. PBS has responded by forging new alliances, like a recent agreement to show HBO films.
Ms. Mitchell, who was interviewed between lobbying meetings, said she would devote the rest of her tenure to raising money. Officials at PBS and its affiliated stations are beginning to lobby for a share of the windfall the federal government may get later this decade when public television stations and other over-the-air broadcasters stop using the airwaves to transmit analog signals, relying instead on digital signals over cable and satellite systems.
Once the broadcasters' part of the spectrum is open, the federal government stands to collect tens of billions of dollars by reselling it to other users like wireless broadband companies. Lobbyists for public television stations are supporting legislation that would put some of the money in a trust fund for public television.
Senator Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat sponsoring the legislation along with Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, has called for the trust fund to be administered by an independent agency following the sort of procedures used by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Some critics, like Tim Graham of the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group, are reluctant to give PBS any independent endowment.
"They want to create an empire that does not have to answer to the Congress or the people," Mr. Graham said. "Conservatives do not want to give more tax dollars to television stations that attack their ideas."
But there are some sympathetic conservatives, at least among the advisers on the Digital Future Initiative committee created by Ms. Mitchell, which met Wednesday in Washington to contemplate how PBS could put a trust fund to use. Norman Orenstein, a committee member who also sits on the PBS board, said Republicans on the committee believed that a trust fund could pay for socially useful programming.
"We're focusing on education and children and making the case that public broadcasting can do valuable things in a digital age that no one else can or will do," said Mr. Orenstein, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group.
But he did not expect the money to come easily.
"You couldn't have a tougher budget environment," Mr. Orenstein said, "and you're going to have vicious scrambling over discretionary domestic spending."
Referring to the recent programming incident, he said, "The timing couldn't have been worse on the Buster thing. This is not a time you want to be in the cross hairs."
PBS is also being criticized by others, like Jeffrey Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy and a longtime advocate of more money for public television.
"I'm concerned that PBS is so desperate for funding and support from the Republican-dominated Congress that they're willing to sell their legacy," Mr. Chester said. "They could forgo their historic mandate to do cutting-edge programming and replace it with Bush-administration-friendly educational content."
John Tierney reported from Washington for this article, and Jacques Steinberg from New York.
And Washington Post:
Because it's simply disgraceful to say the G-word and its despicable cohorts, especially in a Request to Edit Title of Talk On Gays, Suicide Stirs Ire
HHS Is Being Accused of Marginalization
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 16, 2005; Page A17
A federal agency's efforts to remove the words "gay," "lesbian," "bisexual" and "transgender" from the program of a federally funded conference on suicide prevention have inspired scores of experts in mental health to flood the agency with angry e-mails.
"It is incredible, the venom from these people," said Mark Weber, a spokesman for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that is funding the conference and told presenters they should remove the words from the title of a talk.
"My boss is being called a Nazi," Weber said, referring to SAMHSA Administrator Charles G. Curie, whom President Bush appointed in 2001 to run the $3.2 billion agency.
At issue is a conference on suicide prevention to be held Feb. 28 in Portland, Ore., and organized by the Suicide Prevention Resource Center of Newton, Mass., a SAMHSA contractor. On the program is a talk that, until recently, was titled "Suicide Prevention Among Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender Individuals."
Everyone seems to agree the topic is important. Studies have found that the suicide risk among people in these groups is two to three times higher than the average risk.
So it came as a surprise to Ron Bloodworth -- a former coordinator of youth suicide prevention for Oregon and one of three specialists leading the session -- when word came down from SAMHSA project manager Brenda Bruun that they should omit the four words that described, precisely, what the session was about.
Bloodworth was told it would be acceptable to use the term "sexual orientation." But that did not make sense to him. "Everyone has a sexual orientation," he said in an interview yesterday. "But this was about gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders."
Moreover, he noted, transgender people differ from others in terms of sexual identity, not sexual orientation.
"Unless you use an accurate term, the people you are trying to reach don't recognize themselves and don't attend," he said, adding that the agency told him he should not use "gender identity."
According to the agency's Web site, "SAMHSA's vision is a life in the community for everyone."
The title rewrite was one of several requested changes. Another was to add a session on faith-based suicide prevention, said Weber, who said he believes the brouhaha is all a misunderstanding.
SAMHSA prefers the term "sexual orientation" simply because it is more "inclusive," he said. And besides, he added, it was only a suggestion.
Asked how strong a suggestion, Weber replied: "Well, they do need to consider their funding source."
Upon due consideration, Bloodworth renamed the session "Suicide Prevention in Vulnerable Populations." But he is not happy.
"We find this behavior on the part of our government intolerable," he wrote in an e-mail to colleagues, in which he called upon the government to "end this shameful marginalization of an already marginalized at-risk population."
An HHS official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to upstage SAMHSA, said there is not a department-wide policy against using terms relating to sexual identity or orientation at federally funded venues. The official suggested it would be overreaching to link this incident with one in the fall of 2003 when hundreds of grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health bearing words relating to sexual identity or orientation fell under federal scrutiny.
Jerry Reed, executive director of the District-based Suicide Prevention Action Network USA, which has been a subcontractor on SAMHSA grants, defended the agency. "I have found them to be incredibly fair players and interested in making sure we reach out to all vulnerable communities," he said.
But Kenneth D. Stark, director of Washington state's division of alcohol and substance abuse and a member of SAMHSA's advisory committee, said he was surprised by the agency's stance and is unswayed by the "inclusiveness" rationale. "You have to ask: What's the problem?" he said. "I mean, other than something political, what is the problem with these words?" (-M says: good question, sir.)
© 2005 The Washington Post Company Or at least, Bush'll be dead and cold before he pays for such depravity.
Also from the Post: House Raises Penalties for Airing Indecency
By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 17, 2005; Page E01
The Federal Communications Commission could fine broadcasters up to $500,000 for indecency violations under a bill passed overwhelmingly by the House yesterday.
The Broadcast Indecency Act of 2005, approved 389 to 38, is a new version of a bill passed by the House last year in the wake of the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, when singer Janet Jackson's right breast briefly was exposed. The Senate passed similar legislation but the two bodies were unable to reach a compromise in committee.
Currently, the FCC can fine radio and television broadcasters a maximum of $32,500 for violating its decency standards, which say that "patently offensive" sexual or excretory material may not air between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., when children are most likely to be watching. The FCC has no jurisdiction over cable or satellite radio and television.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), not only would increase the maximum fine by more than a factor of 10, it would also allow the FCC to raise the penalty it can levy on performers who commit indecent acts from $11,000 to $500,000. It also mandates a license-revocation hearing after a broadcaster's third offense and orders the FCC to move faster on processing viewer and listener indecency complaints, imposing what Upton calls a 180-day "shot clock" on the agency.
"Today, we are delivering something of real value to American families," Upton said in a statement. "There must be a level of expectation when a parent turns on the [television] or radio between the family hours that the content will be suitable for children. A parent should not have to think twice about the content on the public airwaves. Unfortunately, that situation is far from reality."
Sens. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) have introduced a similar bill that would raise the maximum FCC fine to $325,000 with a cap of $3 million in fines per day per broadcaster, a provision added to protect smaller and independently owned television and radio stations that say they could not afford to pay such large fines.
The White House Office of Management and Budget backed Upton's bill, signaling that President Bush would sign it, or a version of it, into law.
Two of the four major broadcast networks decried the vote (ABC and CBS declined to comment).
The decision "highlights a significant issue that has not yet been addressed -- that the government must give clear guidance to broadcasters as to what is, and is not, indecent," Fox Broadcasting said in a statement. "Absent such guidance, government action on the indecency issue will undoubtedly have a clear chilling effect on protected speech."
NBC-Universal said in a statement that the bill would "indiscriminately threaten a wide variety of programming."
"Threatening to impose huge fines on an athlete, entertainer, or any individual being interviewed, for an isolated, emotional outburst or for graphic artistic material such as that in "Saving Private Ryan," raises very serious constitutional and free speech issues," the company said. "This approach of increased government regulation and censorship is fundamentally misguided."
Upton's bill also was criticized by actors, singers and other artists for allowing the FCC to crack down harder on the performer who commits the indecent act in addition to the broadcaster who airs it.
But the Parents Television Council, which monitors television, disagreed.
"If Janet Jackson walked into a high school and exposed a nipple, she'd be arrested," said Lara Mahaney, director of corporate and entertainment affairs for the PTC. "Why should that be permissible on broadcast television?"
Edward O. Fritts, president of the National Association of Broadcasters, the trade group of more than 1,100 television stations, said his members are close to finishing a report on what he called "responsible programming" guidelines for broadcasters.
Fritts, who announced yesterday that he will leave the powerful lobby after 23 years later this year, said he hoped self-regulation would stave off government action.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company Hey, at least it's not something stupid... right? Right.
Have a nice day, dolls! I'll have Peroché pics uploaded tonight after choir. In the mean time,
Down with the Man!
New York Times: Remember "Postcards From Buster"? Well...
Conservatives have complained [...] about a recent children's program featuring a rabbit named Buster who visited a pair of lesbian parents.
After Education Secretary Margaret Spellings threatened to retract financing for that program - a controversy that some called Bustergate - Ms. Mitchell decided not to distribute it.
February 17, 2005
Conservatives and Rivals Press a Struggling PBS
By JOHN TIERNEY and JACQUES STEINBERG
WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 - It was no accident that PBS found itself turning to Elmo, the popular "Sesame Street" character, to lobby on Capitol Hill this week. There were not many options.
Public television is suffering from an identity crisis, executives inside the Public Broadcasting Service and outsiders say, and it goes far deeper than the announcement by Pat Mitchell that she would step down next year as the beleaguered network's president.
Some public television executives said that running PBS was a thankless job, and that managing a far-flung network composed of independent fiefs around the country was a particularly daunting assignment. They also said they were facing larger issues that would challenge any executive, like increased competition from the cable industry.
Corporate underwriters have been less willing to finance PBS programs, which has left the network increasingly dependent on Washington, where Republicans criticize its programming as elitist and liberal.
The network has also struggled to develop popular new shows.
"The biggest problem we've got is the structure we've got," Alberto Ibarguen, the chairman of PBS and the publisher of The Miami Herald, said in an interview yesterday. "It assumes a lot of government funding, continuing heavy levels of corporate image advertising and no competition. But in the world we're in - the world of increased cable competition, less and less government funding and cutbacks in corporate image advertising - it's a significant problem if that's your business model."
Mr. Ibarguen added: "The risk is the tighter your budgets get, the less you can afford to fail. If you can't afford to fail, you can't afford to take risks."
Among the challenges that Ms. Mitchell has confronted is a trend, lasting nearly a decade, in which corporations have scaled back on the so-called "image advertising" through which they had once financed programs like "Masterpiece Theater." According to PBS's financial statements, revenues drawn from program underwriting - which are paid directly to producers, but catalogued by PBS - reached a five-year peak of $221.9 million in 2001, dropped to $179.4 million in 2003, and rebounded slightly to $184.3 million last year.
PBS hopes to relieve some of the pressure by creating a huge endowment from the proceeds of reselling the spectrum used by its stations when they trade their current broadcast positions for new high-definition stations later in the decade. But that will take persuading the same Congressional and administration officials who have objected to its programming.
Conservatives have complained about Bill Moyers's news program (he has since retired from it) and about a recent children's program featuring a rabbit named Buster who visited a pair of lesbian parents.
After Education Secretary Margaret Spellings threatened to retract financing for that program - a controversy that some called Bustergate - Ms. Mitchell decided not to distribute it.
In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Mitchell, 62, said she had felt no pressure, either from inside her board or outside of PBS, to step aside.
She also said she had not been personally pressured to change programming by Republicans at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides federal money to the system. But she said her programmers had worked with their counterparts at the corporation, which is led by White House appointees, in developing several new shows, including a talk show for the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson.
"They certainly want to make sure we are providing a balanced schedule," she said. "We believe we are. We check that with the people we report to - our member stations and the American public."
One high-level executive at PBS headquarters in Washington, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation for PBS, said new managers at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting had been concerned about a perceived liberal bias at PBS as well as difficulties in fund-raising.
"The thing to remember with public broadcasting is that everything is steered by the money," the executive said. "What used to be a unique thing is now in this competitive environment and has to do whatever it can to survive, which means bending in a way it used to never bend."
Now that 85 percent of Americans subscribe to cable or satellite television, PBS's children shows, historical dramas and wildlife documentaries face competitors like the History Channel, Discovery, A & E, the National Geographic Channel, BBC America, Nickelodeon, and The Learning Channel. PBS has responded by forging new alliances, like a recent agreement to show HBO films.
Ms. Mitchell, who was interviewed between lobbying meetings, said she would devote the rest of her tenure to raising money. Officials at PBS and its affiliated stations are beginning to lobby for a share of the windfall the federal government may get later this decade when public television stations and other over-the-air broadcasters stop using the airwaves to transmit analog signals, relying instead on digital signals over cable and satellite systems.
Once the broadcasters' part of the spectrum is open, the federal government stands to collect tens of billions of dollars by reselling it to other users like wireless broadband companies. Lobbyists for public television stations are supporting legislation that would put some of the money in a trust fund for public television.
Senator Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat sponsoring the legislation along with Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, has called for the trust fund to be administered by an independent agency following the sort of procedures used by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Some critics, like Tim Graham of the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group, are reluctant to give PBS any independent endowment.
"They want to create an empire that does not have to answer to the Congress or the people," Mr. Graham said. "Conservatives do not want to give more tax dollars to television stations that attack their ideas."
But there are some sympathetic conservatives, at least among the advisers on the Digital Future Initiative committee created by Ms. Mitchell, which met Wednesday in Washington to contemplate how PBS could put a trust fund to use. Norman Orenstein, a committee member who also sits on the PBS board, said Republicans on the committee believed that a trust fund could pay for socially useful programming.
"We're focusing on education and children and making the case that public broadcasting can do valuable things in a digital age that no one else can or will do," said Mr. Orenstein, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group.
But he did not expect the money to come easily.
"You couldn't have a tougher budget environment," Mr. Orenstein said, "and you're going to have vicious scrambling over discretionary domestic spending."
Referring to the recent programming incident, he said, "The timing couldn't have been worse on the Buster thing. This is not a time you want to be in the cross hairs."
PBS is also being criticized by others, like Jeffrey Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy and a longtime advocate of more money for public television.
"I'm concerned that PBS is so desperate for funding and support from the Republican-dominated Congress that they're willing to sell their legacy," Mr. Chester said. "They could forgo their historic mandate to do cutting-edge programming and replace it with Bush-administration-friendly educational content."
John Tierney reported from Washington for this article, and Jacques Steinberg from New York.
And Washington Post:
Because it's simply disgraceful to say the G-word and its despicable cohorts, especially in a Request to Edit Title of Talk On Gays, Suicide Stirs Ire
HHS Is Being Accused of Marginalization
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 16, 2005; Page A17
A federal agency's efforts to remove the words "gay," "lesbian," "bisexual" and "transgender" from the program of a federally funded conference on suicide prevention have inspired scores of experts in mental health to flood the agency with angry e-mails.
"It is incredible, the venom from these people," said Mark Weber, a spokesman for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that is funding the conference and told presenters they should remove the words from the title of a talk.
"My boss is being called a Nazi," Weber said, referring to SAMHSA Administrator Charles G. Curie, whom President Bush appointed in 2001 to run the $3.2 billion agency.
At issue is a conference on suicide prevention to be held Feb. 28 in Portland, Ore., and organized by the Suicide Prevention Resource Center of Newton, Mass., a SAMHSA contractor. On the program is a talk that, until recently, was titled "Suicide Prevention Among Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender Individuals."
Everyone seems to agree the topic is important. Studies have found that the suicide risk among people in these groups is two to three times higher than the average risk.
So it came as a surprise to Ron Bloodworth -- a former coordinator of youth suicide prevention for Oregon and one of three specialists leading the session -- when word came down from SAMHSA project manager Brenda Bruun that they should omit the four words that described, precisely, what the session was about.
Bloodworth was told it would be acceptable to use the term "sexual orientation." But that did not make sense to him. "Everyone has a sexual orientation," he said in an interview yesterday. "But this was about gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders."
Moreover, he noted, transgender people differ from others in terms of sexual identity, not sexual orientation.
"Unless you use an accurate term, the people you are trying to reach don't recognize themselves and don't attend," he said, adding that the agency told him he should not use "gender identity."
According to the agency's Web site, "SAMHSA's vision is a life in the community for everyone."
The title rewrite was one of several requested changes. Another was to add a session on faith-based suicide prevention, said Weber, who said he believes the brouhaha is all a misunderstanding.
SAMHSA prefers the term "sexual orientation" simply because it is more "inclusive," he said. And besides, he added, it was only a suggestion.
Asked how strong a suggestion, Weber replied: "Well, they do need to consider their funding source."
Upon due consideration, Bloodworth renamed the session "Suicide Prevention in Vulnerable Populations." But he is not happy.
"We find this behavior on the part of our government intolerable," he wrote in an e-mail to colleagues, in which he called upon the government to "end this shameful marginalization of an already marginalized at-risk population."
An HHS official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to upstage SAMHSA, said there is not a department-wide policy against using terms relating to sexual identity or orientation at federally funded venues. The official suggested it would be overreaching to link this incident with one in the fall of 2003 when hundreds of grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health bearing words relating to sexual identity or orientation fell under federal scrutiny.
Jerry Reed, executive director of the District-based Suicide Prevention Action Network USA, which has been a subcontractor on SAMHSA grants, defended the agency. "I have found them to be incredibly fair players and interested in making sure we reach out to all vulnerable communities," he said.
But Kenneth D. Stark, director of Washington state's division of alcohol and substance abuse and a member of SAMHSA's advisory committee, said he was surprised by the agency's stance and is unswayed by the "inclusiveness" rationale. "You have to ask: What's the problem?" he said. "I mean, other than something political, what is the problem with these words?" (-M says: good question, sir.)
© 2005 The Washington Post Company Or at least, Bush'll be dead and cold before he pays for such depravity.
Also from the Post: House Raises Penalties for Airing Indecency
By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 17, 2005; Page E01
The Federal Communications Commission could fine broadcasters up to $500,000 for indecency violations under a bill passed overwhelmingly by the House yesterday.
The Broadcast Indecency Act of 2005, approved 389 to 38, is a new version of a bill passed by the House last year in the wake of the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, when singer Janet Jackson's right breast briefly was exposed. The Senate passed similar legislation but the two bodies were unable to reach a compromise in committee.
Currently, the FCC can fine radio and television broadcasters a maximum of $32,500 for violating its decency standards, which say that "patently offensive" sexual or excretory material may not air between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., when children are most likely to be watching. The FCC has no jurisdiction over cable or satellite radio and television.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), not only would increase the maximum fine by more than a factor of 10, it would also allow the FCC to raise the penalty it can levy on performers who commit indecent acts from $11,000 to $500,000. It also mandates a license-revocation hearing after a broadcaster's third offense and orders the FCC to move faster on processing viewer and listener indecency complaints, imposing what Upton calls a 180-day "shot clock" on the agency.
"Today, we are delivering something of real value to American families," Upton said in a statement. "There must be a level of expectation when a parent turns on the [television] or radio between the family hours that the content will be suitable for children. A parent should not have to think twice about the content on the public airwaves. Unfortunately, that situation is far from reality."
Sens. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) have introduced a similar bill that would raise the maximum FCC fine to $325,000 with a cap of $3 million in fines per day per broadcaster, a provision added to protect smaller and independently owned television and radio stations that say they could not afford to pay such large fines.
The White House Office of Management and Budget backed Upton's bill, signaling that President Bush would sign it, or a version of it, into law.
Two of the four major broadcast networks decried the vote (ABC and CBS declined to comment).
The decision "highlights a significant issue that has not yet been addressed -- that the government must give clear guidance to broadcasters as to what is, and is not, indecent," Fox Broadcasting said in a statement. "Absent such guidance, government action on the indecency issue will undoubtedly have a clear chilling effect on protected speech."
NBC-Universal said in a statement that the bill would "indiscriminately threaten a wide variety of programming."
"Threatening to impose huge fines on an athlete, entertainer, or any individual being interviewed, for an isolated, emotional outburst or for graphic artistic material such as that in "Saving Private Ryan," raises very serious constitutional and free speech issues," the company said. "This approach of increased government regulation and censorship is fundamentally misguided."
Upton's bill also was criticized by actors, singers and other artists for allowing the FCC to crack down harder on the performer who commits the indecent act in addition to the broadcaster who airs it.
But the Parents Television Council, which monitors television, disagreed.
"If Janet Jackson walked into a high school and exposed a nipple, she'd be arrested," said Lara Mahaney, director of corporate and entertainment affairs for the PTC. "Why should that be permissible on broadcast television?"
Edward O. Fritts, president of the National Association of Broadcasters, the trade group of more than 1,100 television stations, said his members are close to finishing a report on what he called "responsible programming" guidelines for broadcasters.
Fritts, who announced yesterday that he will leave the powerful lobby after 23 years later this year, said he hoped self-regulation would stave off government action.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company Hey, at least it's not something stupid... right? Right.
Have a nice day, dolls! I'll have Peroché pics uploaded tonight after choir. In the mean time,
Down with the Man!