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June 2005

Gov't Crackdown On Radio Gov't Crackdown On Radio

"I'd rather have a boring station than no station at all." With 13 years of hindsight and constant reminders of his station's occasional indiscretions, WSUC's current station manager Christopher Ortega can't take any chances. On June 21, 1992, a student DJ at SUNY-Cortland's WSUC played Kid Rock's "Yo-Da-Lin In The Valley," which explicitly describes one of the Kid's favorite sexual acts. All it took was this one mid-afternoon lapse in judgment, and the school owed the US government $23,750 (later reduced to a little over four grand for complying with the FCC).

As if Ortega isn't facing enough internal pressure from his faculty, the House Of Representatives is proposing a bill tentatively titled the "Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act Of 2005," that would raise the roof on fines to $500,000, while adding personal culpability for DJs, musicians and anyone else freely expressing him or herself on public airwaves. The Senate has yet to approve the bill—its current revision brings the maximum fine down to a "modest" $325,000 and doesn't include any personal culpability clause— but if it does, it could spur an arctic chill on free expression in broadcasting.

"You end up in a situation where… artists either censor themselves, which is problematic in terms of the creation of art, or broadcasters make certain programming decisions about who they're not even going to give access to, on the chance that they may run into a problem," says Rebecca Rhine, Assistant National Executive Director for the American Federation Of Television And Radio Artists (AFTRA).

Tim Winter, Executive Director for the media watchgroup Parents Television Council, agrees there are greater constitutional issues that need examining, and that the current maximum fine of $32,500, which is "a heck of a lot of money," as he puts it, should already be enough to inspire college and noncommercial stations to obey current obscenity laws. A spokesperson for the FCC's Enforcement Bureau declined to comment on the bill as it is "proposed legislation."

"We're living in a climate of fear right now," says KPFA/Berkley, California's Music Director Luis Medina. "We have a responsibility of keeping our lines of communication open. We have the responsibility of playing new music, of not being afraid of expressing ourselves." Medina says that his station, the America's first community-funded station and a Pacifica member, will actively challenge the bill on-air and educate listeners on its implications. He maintains that broadcasters do not need to sacrifice edginess or integrity to adhere to the proposed to bill. "It's the responsibility of college radio, public radio, alternative radio, satellite radio even, to put out the truth—to talk about the subjects that aren't given the play, that are being whitewashed."

But what if your voice fails to reach any ears in the first place? The main concern of KALX general manager Sandra Wasson stretches beyond the fact that one student's bad choice (a half-million dollar bad choice) could put her entire station out of commission. As part of the University Of California system, she says, the Berkeley station wouldn't even be able to petition its senators because it's a student-funded state organization. The call to arms, then, lies in the faculty, students and concerned listeners as individuals.

AFTRA provides a petition on its website (www.aftra.org) addressing the constitutionality of the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, which will be passed along to Senate co-sponsors, the Senate Commerce Committee and individual state senators. The Future Of Music Coalition (www.futureofmusic.org) features a similar letter that it submitted to the Senate in March. In addition, the American Federation Of Musicians stated in a press release that they will continue to oppose the Senate's fining of individual performers, which they see as a free speech violation.

For those who have no trouble speaking up to the powers that be, a lot comes down to sheer ingenuity. "We have to be smarter about it," says Medina. "It's not going to shut us up and it shouldn't shut anybody else up who is intelligent and knows how to program and can get around this thing… You have to have a strong network of advocacy that is going to influence our politicians." WSUC's Ortega thinks, quite simply, that the House's proposal is foolish. Chasing after individual DJs with a $500,000 fine would be like "trying to milk a turnip."

Still, he agrees that prevention is the cure. "I'm sure we could get the whole station mobilized," he says. "It's a lot easier for the radio station to get into trouble than to get itself out of it."

- Kory Grow

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