Message to Parents Television Council: You already been busted; don't push it
FCC Dismisses 36 Indecency Complaints as Not 'Patently Offensive'
By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 25, 2005; Page E01
It's generally okay to use a common nickname for "Richard" as an insult on network television, the Federal Communications Commission ruled yesterday, in a denial of several indecency complaints brought to the agency.
The complaints covered 25 television shows and a movie broadcast between 2001 and 2004 and were brought by the Parents Television Council, the Los Angeles media watchdog responsible for flooding the FCC with hundreds of thousands of e-mailed indecency complaints in 2004.
Last year, under pressure from the public and lawmakers, the FCC cracked down on indecency, proposing nearly $8 million in fines against radio and television programs. Congress crafted legislation allowing the agency to raise indecency fines from a maximum of $32,500 to as high as $500,000.
But the agency also denied a number of complaints, ruling that -- even though they include material that may be tasteless to many -- they do not meet the agency's regulations of being "patently offensive" while including sexual or excretory language or images.
In 2003, the FCC's enforcement division ruled it was not indecent when Bono, the frontman for rock group U2, uttered an expletive during a live NBC awards show. The five-member FCC commission later reversed the decision and ruled it indecent. Yesterday's denials were voted on by the commission, tacitly approving use of the nickname as an insult. Critics charge that the FCC arbitrarily applies its decency regulations to content, but the agency says it has been consistent in policing the airwaves.
Yesterday's denials covered 36 instances from a variety of shows, such as the WB's "Gilmore Girls," NBC's "Friends," ABC's "NYPD Blue" and Fox's animated shows, "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill."
A number of the denials focused on the nickname -- also a slang term for the male sexual organ -- which increasingly is working its way into television scripts.
For instance, the agency ruled that it was not indecent when, during an Oct. 30, 2002, episode of the WB's "Dawson's Creek," one character says to another: "Listen, I know that you're [upset] at your dad for flaking on you. It doesn't mean he's a bad dad, and it doesn't mean he doesn't love you." Prompting another character to say, "No, it just means he's a [nickname/slang term for male sexual organ]."
In its ruling on the complaints, the FCC said "these were epithets intended to denigrate or were a play on words. Their use in these contexts was not sufficiently explicit or graphic and/or sustained to be patently offensive."
