Page 460 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Regulat ng the A rwaves: “A Toaster w th P ctures” or a Publ c Serv ce? |

agency’s infrastructure. In addition, ACT filed a petition with the Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) to ban commercials for sugar-based foods (cereals, candy)
and toys on television. The ACT campaign garnered substantial public interest,
drawing attention to ACT’s concerns over the health hazards of manipulative
television advertising and transforming cereal commercials to be more sensitive
to their impact on young audiences.
The hazards of indecent programming on children also have spurred both
federal regulation of the airwaves and public interest campaigns to stem its ubiq-
uity on television. The 1934 act prohibited indecent speech from the airwaves,
though what constitutes indecency has been a contested issue. In the 1970s, for
example, the FCC had sanctioned a Pacifica radio station for airing a broadcast
with alleged indecent language, George Carlin’s “seven dirty words” routine; the
station disagreed that this routine was “indecent” and questioned the FCC’s au-
thority to police its content. The Supreme Court decided in favor of the FCC in
its Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation (1978) decision,
and ruled that the FCC has the authority to determine what constitutes inde-
cency and to prohibit indecent broadcasts when children were likely to be part
of the broadcasting audience.
Congress, in the 1996 Telecommunications Act, also acted to protect children
from indecent programming. It required television manufacturers to install a
V-chip in television sets that would allow parents to block programming un-
suitable for children. The act also required the television industry to develop a
ratings system, similar to that of the motion picture industry, which would alert
viewers to programming inappropriate for children. Both the V-chip and the
television ratings system would come under attack, the former for being difficult
to use, the latter for being difficult to understand.
The brief exposure of Janet Jackson’s breast during the halftime show of the
2004 Super Bowl catapulted the issue of broadcasting decency into the national
headlines and onto the FCC’s agenda. The Parents Television Council (PTC), a
watchdog group founded in 1995, solicited hundreds of thousands of people to
complain to the FCC that the airing of the breast constituted an indecent broad-
cast. The FCC in 2006 fined 20 CBS stations for this broadcast. Since the 2004
Super Bowl incident, the FCC has increased the number and amount of fines for
indecency it has imposed on broadcasters.

rEguLaTing ownErshiP
The FCC and Congress continually have considered the impact of who owns
the media on service to the public interest. Broadcasting policy has addressed
concerns over horizontal integration (how many broadcasting stations a single
company could own) and vertical integration (whether a single company could
have holdings in multiple media markets). People who favor restrictions on
media ownership have claimed that the consolidation of media threatens di-
versity, competition, and localism—the core values of the public interest. Those
who oppose restrictions counter that concentration can help promote these val-
ues; they currently also argue that the rise of new technologies like DVD players