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Broadcast decency bill clears hurdle in Senate

A Federal Communications Commission spokeswoman is praising a Senate panel for passing legislation that would allow the FCC to impose fines on broadcasters for using so-called "fleeting" instances of profanity or nudity during children's viewing hours.



The Senate Commerce Committee recently approved the "Protecting Children from Indecent Programming Act" (S. 1780). The measure, sponsored by Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) and Mark Pryor (D-Arkansas), would require the FCC "to maintain a policy that a single word or image may be considered indecent."

Penny Nance, special advisor for the FCC, remarks that the legislation is "important and helpful in the FCC's struggle to regulate indecency on the public airwaves."

"It reaffirmed the FCC's ability to fine for use of the 'f-word' and the 's-word' during prime time when so many of the people in the watching audience tend to be children," she says.

Nance explains that the FCC looks at every indecency complaint individually -- noting that unpredictable instances of profanity on live news broadcasts in the middle of a hurricane are much different than Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie "using the most coarse language possible" at the Billboard Music Awards.

The FCC spokeswoman also states that this new legislation, should it be signed into law, would not only answer the regulatory problems with profanity, but also go one step further and tackle the issue of nudity.

Currently the FCC is handcuffed by a Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that bars the agency from imposing any fines for such "fleeting" instances of profanity and nudity. Proponents of this new legislation hope to overturn that ruling.