Don't Just Blame Imus; Blame the Do-Nothing FCC

Jack Thompson April 13th, 2007

On February 24, 2004, I heard Howard Stern air on his nationally syndicated radio show the following comment:

"Ever bang any famous nigger chicks? What do they smell like? Watermelons?"

I immediately faxed and e-mailed that racist, misogynist comment to both Clear Channel Communications, on whose station I heard it in South Florida and to FCC Commissioner Michael Copps' senior legal advisor, Jordan Goldstein.

As a result, Clear Channel removed the Howard Stern Show from all its stations, never to return. Howard Stern exclaimed, "This lunatic lawyer in Miami got me off the air!" What did the FCC do in response? Nothing.

In November 2005, the FCC entered into a formal Consent Decree with Viacom/Infinity by which this giant syndicator of the Howard Stern Show agreed to pay $3.5 million in fines to the FCC, some of which was caused by Stern, and the broadcaster promised a) never to do it again, and b) to aggressively use time delays on all its broadcasts so that supervisory personnel could use the "dump button" to prevent airing of offensive material on the public airwaves.

Two FCC Commissioners at the time the Consent Decree was struck complained that "the FCC has been down this road before" with Viacom/Infinity, and that the FCC was letting this giant broadcaster off the hook again with a slap on the wrist, in light of the tens of millions of dollars made for Viacom/Infinity by Stern's broadcasts that Stern himself called "pornographic."

Guess who was and is bound by that Consent Decree? Answer: CBS Radio, which is the successor to Infinity. It is CBS Radio that aired Imus' racist and misogynistic comment the other day. It is thus CBS Radio that promised the FCC to use its "dump button" to prevent the airing of such comments. The fact that Imus is now history is proof that CBS should have used that dump button and did not.

It is CBS that brought us the "wardrobe malfunction" of the Super Bowl half-time show. What did the FCC do in response? It fined CBS in the amount of $550,000. Advertisers on the next Super Bowl broadcast paid $2.4 million for a 30-second ad spot. That comes out to a fine equivalent to revenue for eleven seconds of air time. Even people at CBS can do the math.

Americans don't know that 18 USC 1464, which is the Act of Congress held constitutional by the US Supreme Court and which prohibits the airing of indecent, obscene, or profane material from 6 am to 10 pm, is a criminal statute. It provides that anyone guilty of airing such material can be punished by up to two years in prison.

Howard Stern repeatedly said that if he were ever held responsible for what he did on the public airwaves he would stop doing it. What did the FCC do in response to that admission? Nothing.

Not once in the history of this country has the FCC ever sent a criminal referral over to the Justice Department in order that anyone responsible for airing illegal material on the public airwaves would be prosecuted criminally.

Why did Imus feel comfortable doing what he did, repeatedly, having gotten caught this time? Because the FCC for twenty years has been sending a clear signal to broadcasters that it is not serious about protecting the right of citizens to keep our public airwaves clear of pop culture sewage.

That incredible dereliction of duty is precisely why two months ago I filed a federal lawsuit in the US District Court of the Southern District of Florida to compel the FCC, finally, to do its job and to start enforcing 18 USC 1464, instead of contemplating its regulatory navel over technical broadcast issues that do not nearly impact American society the way the filth on the public airwaves has.

Stay tuned.

Jack Thompson is a Miami lawyer who has, for twenty years, waged a sometimes successful fight against the illegal distribution of adult entertainment material to children.

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 9:32 am and is filed under Don Imus, FCC, Howard Stern, Jack Thompson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.