The huge FCC fine against a Virginia station is a sign we need to rethink broadcast indecency rules

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission intends to fine WDBJ, a Roanoke (VA) television station, $325,000 for a July 2012 new report that included, for three seconds, a video image of a sex act from a porn site. The FCC called the fine “the highest … ever … for a single indecent broadcast on one station,” and Travis LeBlanc, chief of the FCC’s enforcement bureau, said in a written statement, “Our action here sends a clear signal that there are severe consequences for TV stations that air sexually explicit images when children are likely to be watching.”

In my view, the case sends another clear signal: that it’s time to rethink the legal regime that holds broadcasters to different standards for indecency, and extend to them the same First Amendment protections that apply to other media. We now have new delivery systems: cable and satellite operators, web platforms, streaming services. Their features and popularity have eroded the “uniquely pervasive presence” of broadcasting. Consumers today enjoy more freedom to choose what content they consume, and they have new tools to shield their children from certain content. All of which suggests to me, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in 2011, that “the factual basis on which Pacifica rests no longer holds true" -- and that it’s time for First Amendment purposes to treat broadcasters as equals to newspapers, magazines, and the like.