The FCC: A Failure of Enforcement     5/28/2003
By Martha Kleder

In recent years, the FCC has failed to effectively enforce the rules against obscenity and indecency on the airwaves.

On April 30, 2003, a coalition of family groups including CWA and CWA's Culture and Family Institute met with three of the five Federal Communications Commissioners (FCC) and demanded tougher broadcast decency enforcement. The groups set a June 30 deadline for seeing some action toward that end.

"Some of the commissioners seem to be getting it," said Culture and Family Institute Director Robert Knight, who attended the meeting along with this writer. "But others have a long way to go to understand the depth of the problem and their own responsibility to fix it." Knight said he was amazed that Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy said that she could not determine whether the use of the 'F' word during prime time, when millions of children are watching, was actionable or not. [more ...]

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