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FCC Settles Censorship Claims with ClearChannel

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the followup-to-this dept.

The Importance of writes "Earlier this week Slashdot debated whether the FCC should be abolished. One of the reasons many think the FCC should go away is because of censorship. Well, yesterday, the FCC settled all existing censorship investigations with Clear Channel for $1.75M and a promise to be better in the future, such as by firing DJs for their first offense. Clear Channel also plead guilty to violating indecency standards, but no one is saying what, exactly they said that was wrong. On the other hand, the FCC seems to have forgotten that they decided a couple of months ago to regulate profanity in addition to indecency. In other FCC news, they've posted the internet section of the FCC History Project."

4 of 357 comments (clear)

  1. thats nice, but by Spanyrd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    what about the fact that they own the entire market in some areas?

    --
    one of these days I'm gonna patent the technology that lets Jason Vorhees catch up to cars by moving at a slow walk.
    1. Re:thats nice, but by rusty0101 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Unless they own over half of the "media" in the area, including TV, Cable, and local Print media, the FCC does not consider them to have a fraction to be concerned about.

      This is one of the reasons US West (before merger with Qwest) had to drop interest in some of the Cable companies they had purchased when they had partner ownership with both Time Warner, and Disney. As a result some of the markets they were in included all of the media outlets.

      -Rusty

      --
      You never know...
  2. FedSpeak 101 by Giant+Ape+Skeleton · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It's interesting that the FCC distinguishes between obscenity and mere profanity.

    Kind of gives you insight into the bureaucratic mindset in general, especially as applied to subjective matters like decency....

    --
    The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
  3. could anybody explain... by User+956 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Could someone explain to me why Howard Stern can say something, and it's "indecent", but if Oprah uses the same language, in the same setting, in the same way, it's magically *not* indecent?

    ...yeah, that's what I thought. Somehow the current administration seems to have forgotten about "equal protection under the law". Maybe it was that big Constitution-burning party they had right after stealing office.

    --
    The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.