FCC crackdown intimidates local broadcasters

George Carlin has his famous list of seven words you can't say on television. Strangely, the Federal Communications Commission, the agency responsible for regulating TV and radio broadcasts, has no such list.

Letting a four-letter word slip out over the airwaves isn't against the law, assistant program directors for local radio stations told the Independent Register. The FCC does ban "indecency," but the agency never elaborates on just what constitutes indecency.

The result is broadcasters grow ever more timid and lapse further into self-censorship. Two assistant program directors from Beasley Broadcast Group stations told us they've grown more cautious since the FCC announced its clampdown on media indecency.

It seems to us -- we wrote in a Jan. 4 editorial -- that if the FCC is going to enforce its anachronistic code of morality and censor citizens' speech, the least it could do is give folks a clear answer on what is and isn't allowed.

Read more about this fascinating and complex issue in "You can't say [CENSORED] on the radio," a front-page news feature in the Jan. 4 edition of the Independent Register.

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