Indecency on the Airwaves
By Gary Steven Krogh, 12.02.04

The U.S. broadcast media industry regularly airs indecent images, speech and music.

If it can be said that self-censorship equals discretion and even condemnation, then television and radio stations produce visual and aural imagery that condones sexually explicit content on air.

Some broadcasters claim that the U.S. Constitution ensures their right to air whatever material they choose. Some legislators claim that the public, not the Federal government, should set standards of decency and determine how to react when broadcasters violate those standards. However, the problem of indecency on the airwaves may not end by imposing sanctions against the broadcast industry.

Indeed, that could have a reverse effect. But the idea seems to oversimplify the issue because broadcast indecency may have originated from our cultural desire to see, hear and emotionally experience diverse, stimulating material. And with profits in the double–digit billions, we can assume that the entertainment industry is a powerful force in American culture.

Not to put too fine a point on the matter, but when Hollywood produces, people pay attention. From television shows, to documentaries, to full-length motions pictures, producers in Hollywood govern the mechanical standards of how we see images.

Consequently, the more realistic they make a television show, the more visually enticing it becomes. The more enticing it is, the more stimulating we have allowed it to be.

But have we have abdicated our responsibility to intelligently decide our own standards of morality? Have we indicated that graphic imagery is preferable to aesthetic beauty? Are we permitting broadcast media and the entertainment industry to summarize our cultural values?

Newer television shows tantalize our senses, using technological innovation. But they impart a moral message as well: it is acceptable to curse and resort to physical attraction and violence when intellect seems to fail.

The music we purchase and hear on the radio is as graphically interlaced with profanity, sexuality and moral depravity as many television shows. Music that bears parental warnings is only being minimally edited for public broadcast. Many children know all the lyrics anyway. And some radio shows reflect our culture’s desire to listen to the human experience through a specific moral filter, the perception of the artist.

Perception is how we filter what we see and hear. And the U.S. Constitution has granted that our right to free speech cannot be taken away. In that sense, many media outlets have resisted government restriction on their freedom to air certain materials.

Perhaps this is the time when parents and education specialists can have the strongest influence on their children. Parents mostly, but schools too, should impart children with the knowledge while artists and broadcasters have the freedom to produce and distribute objectionable material — one they call artistic.

Mature children and adults have the responsibility to make intelligent choices as to what they see and hear, and they should exercise their own freedom of speech at the cash register and in the customer complaint boxes of broadcast studios to protest the selling and airing of profanity.

In terms of parental concerns against the profane and objectionable material many broadcasters air, some legislators would take away the license to broadcast from those who violate moral standards.

On the other hand, other legislators express concerns against eroding the Constitution’s protection of free speech. It may be useful to impose meaningful fines on broadcasters who violate moral standards, until those broadcasters are financially independent enough to consider any fine mere annoyance, or a minor operational cost.

However, it is equally dangerous to empower the Federal government to legislate moral standards. Representatives with this philosophy suggest that adults should take an active, responsible role in setting the standards of morality that artists and broadcasters should follow. This philosophy limits the role of the government, and encourages people to either condone or condemn potentially indecent material.

If we define indecency on the airwaves as a problem that only government intervention can solve, then we have not only given our individual sovereignty to the entertainment and broadcast industry to determine our moral norms, we will be permitting our government to dictate what we are allowed to watch, listen to, and ultimately how we should think.

It is our responsibility to determine what is indecent. Our citizens should set our cultural standards–not our government. After all, we do have a “government of the people.”