LONE DEMOCRAT ON FCC RESPONDS TO PROTESTS ABOUT 'VICTORIA'S SECRET' ON CBS
By Fred Jackson and Jody Brown
It appears the protests over CBS's airing this week of the Victoria's Secret lingerie fashion show have caught the ear of at least one commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission.
Several conservative watchdog groups such as the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, and the Parents Television Council have asked their supporters to contact the FCC to protest CBS's action. The program featured scantily clad models advertising products from Victoria's Secret. It was shown during prime family-viewing hours. [See Earlier Article]
So what is the measuring stick the government agency uses when it receives complaints from consumers about what is being broadcast on America's airwaves? The FCC defines indecency as any “language or material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory organs or activities.”
Yesterday the day after the Victoria's Secret broadcast FCC Commissioner Michael Copps called for an overhaul of the government's broadcast indecency standard. Copps is one of the five commissioners at the FCC, and the only Democrat among the group.
“Too many indecency complaints from consumers and too many truly indecent broadcasts are falling through the cracks,” Copps said during a briefing on Thursday.
Reuters News says his comment came as his office was flooded with hundreds of complaints about the Wednesday night CBS special featuring lingerie-clad models. The report says many of those complaints came in the form of e-mails with subject lines such as “When will this trash stop?” and “Victoria's Secret smut show.”
Copps said he did not watch the show himself, but has come to the conclusion that the current definition of indecency should be capturing some of these programs and it is not. “We are only having a paucity of enforcement actions against programming that is palpably and demonstrably indecent,” he stated during the briefing.
A spokesman for Copps stated the commissioner has been clear in the past where he stands on indecency, and said Copps' remarks were unrelated to the Victoria's Secret broadcast.
Associated Press reports the FCC enforcement bureau had nothing to say about Commissioner Copps' comments specifically but it did say they strictly enforce the agency's definition of decency, and that FCC rules are reviewed and changed as warranted or as the industry changes.
(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)