FCC sum up

Understanding the FCC and Communications Law.
Chairman Powell offers a very good summation, in today's Times, of communications law and the FCC's role within. He is responding to some of the hype as of late, and I agree with his position. (For instance, giving a ruling before the airing of Saving Private Ryan would have been a prior restraint, running afoul of the 1st amendment.) But it is also simply a nice primer on the FCC's function under current law. As an example:

The F.C.C.'s job of regulating indecent content on the airwaves is not optional; it has been required ever since Congress first made the broadcast of obscene, indecent and profane material illegal more than 70 years ago. The law continues to enjoy strong bipartisan support.

Even so, there are important limits placed on the F.C.C. Our rules do not ban indecent content entirely; they merely restrict its broadcast during times in which children are likely to be in the audience, namely from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Courts have consistently held these rules constitutional, accepting that the government has a compelling interest in protecting children from inappropriate material.

For material to be indecent in the legal sense it must be of a sexual or excretory nature and it must be patently offensive. Mere bad taste is not actionable. Context remains the critical factor in determining if content is legally indecent. Words or actions might be acceptable as part of a news program, or as an indispensable component of a dramatic film, but be nothing more than sexual pandering in another context. That context and the specific facts of each program are reasons the government can't devise a book of rules listing all the bad stuff. In 2001, however, the agency issued policy guidelines summarizing the case law on indecency, and each new ruling since then clarifies what is prohibited.