Speaker 1: We've been talking a lot about the FCC lately, but it's been focused really on Title II and net neutrality and that side of things, which is one of the more important sides of what the FCC does. A much less important side, but one that the religious right likes to focus on is that of indecency rules and swearing and can you show the breast but not the nipple or is the nipple now okay, profanity, that type of thing. And today's classic interview takes us back to July of 2010 when Robert Peters, who's the president of the conservative group Morality in Media, joined us to talk about how imperative it is that President Obama focus on swearing on television and how it's just so bad for children to hear swears and blah, blah, blah. It really is a good reminder of how unimportant these issues of swearing and nudity on television are in the grand scheme of things. In so many other countries, it's just not a big deal. And in the US we can't seem to get out of this sort of puritanical mentality with regard to this. So we'll go back to Robert Peters back in 2010. This is not what the FCC or President Obama should be focusing on. Joining us on the phone is Robert Peters, president of Morality in Media, and here he is to talk about something that we were paying very close attention to, which was this recent FCC ruling about indecency. Hey, Robert, thanks for calling in today.

Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: So tell me, sum up for us, first of all, what this FCC ruling says. My understanding is that it's a move in the direction of suggesting individual utterances of the so-called seven dirty words aren't necessarily indecent. Is my reading accurate?

Speaker 2: I tell you, at one level I was surprised that it was a court of appeals decision, federal court of appeals decision here in Manhattan. And the case really focused on the isolated, exploitive policy change that the FCC made a few, several years ago now. That was really the focus of the case. But instead of deciding that narrow issue, and at least unless I read the case erroneously, the court really didn't answer that question one way or the other. What it did was say that the overall FCC indecency law enforcement policy is unconstitutionally vague, left open the question of whether the law itself is constitutional. And in my opinion, it left for a future day the question of whether, you know, there are situations where a single expletive could violate the law. In my opinion, it would be insane to hold that never could a single expletive violate the law. So the court didn't answer that question.

Speaker 1: So I mean, give us a sense, our audience, I'm sure their number one thing they'll want to know as we talk here, morality in media, does it, does it have a conservative outlook on indecency and profanity and pornography or liberal?

Speaker 2: No. Well, by in today's dichotomy, we'd certainly be on the conservative side of the issue. I must confess that I wasn't here back then, but back in the 1970s, morality in media submitted an amicus brief in support of the FCC in the Pacifica case, FCC versus Pacifica, the seven dirty words case. Yeah, of course. We submitted a brief back then and in support of the government.

Speaker 1: And so tell me, what did, I mean, if in a perfect world, if you could just decide what should be legal to broadcast, what should be decent or indecent, what, what do you think that right now the, you know, rules are too strict, are they too lenient? What would you like to see?

Speaker 2: Well, I tell you, if I lived in a perfect world, there wouldn't be any of it, you know, by my definition. But I came to the conclusion some years ago that I don't live in a perfect world. And I came to a related conclusion that it's not within my power to create one.

Speaker 1: But wait a second. When you say, when you say there wouldn't be any of it, you mean there wouldn't be any restrictions or there just wouldn't be people talking about what you consider indecent or

Speaker 2: profane? There wouldn't be any vulgarity, profanity, obscenity, you know, blasphemy. In a perfect world, we wouldn't have these things. But we don't live in a perfect world and I don't think that mankind is going to create a perfect world. So I, I honestly, you know, I honestly think that, you know, in this area of life, as in many other areas of life, we, the smart course of action would be to find a workable compromise, not going completely to one extreme. Perhaps the, the, the Taliban these days would exemplify one extreme. But so when you say, when you say, which would be, in my opinion, in many cases exemplified by the ACLU. Wow. So I honestly, hold on a second, let's back up here for a second.

Speaker 1: When you say blasphemy, what do you mean by, I didn't know blasphemy was even in the picture

Speaker 2: here. Uh, you know, the, the, uh, federal, the broadcast indecency law, which was enacted by Congress way back in 1927, uh, speaks of profane language, which would, you know, which wouldn't, you know, I think back then it was, it would encompass blasphemy, but what does that, what does that mean?

Speaker 1: Does that mean this country? No. What do you mean by blasphemy?

Speaker 2: Is that talking negatively? You know, I'm, you wouldn't in, in, you know, I tell you historically blasphemy was not considered protected by our first amendment. Now the modern day Supreme court changed that personally. I understand the difficulty with banning blasphemy, but Robert, what I'm trying to get a sense

Speaker 1: of what is blasphemy? I don't understand the term.

Speaker 2: I'm not a religious guy. Depends on how one would, you know, I tell you, I don't know if there's any one definition that would completely in to some people, if you don't agree with their religious theology, it's blasphemy. What is it to you though? What's your opinion? At what level? But I think, you know, from a legal perspective, I think it was railing against God, you know, saying, you know, just purposefully bad things about God. But in today's world, if you don't agree with somebody, you're, you know, it's blasphemy. And obviously I think we don't want the government punishing people because they don't agree with someone else's religion and they express that dissent. I mean, that to me would be why we have a First Amendment. But blasphemy, I think historically, you know, raging against God, you know, calling God. But you know, whether that would be a wise restriction today or not, to me, isn't the issue.

Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I think it wouldn't be. I've read several instances of news outlets not airing stories simply out of fear of violating FCC policies, right? So they say, you know, I can't figure out a way to kind of skirt around the restrictions that currently are, the way the wind is blowing with the FCC. So I'm not going to cover it at all. This includes, you know, stories about 9-11, deaths of soldiers in Iraq. It feels to me like we're getting closer to, the more we restrict what can be broadcast, we're getting closer to an Orwellian society. I mean, it's no different than looking over your shoulder for a camera in 1984, is it not? Don't we need to get away from that and relax these restrictions, antiquated restrictions?

Speaker 2: Well, you know, in the Seven Dirty Words case, you know, FCC versus Pacifica, Justice Stevens wrote what is called the plurality opinion in that case. I think he made a very important point in a footnote. He said that rarely, and I'm paraphrasing perhaps a little too conservatively here, but I think it would be, but rarely if ever can an important thought not be expressed without the use of a vulgarism. You know, I point to the floor, you know, the floor of the Senate and the House. You know, rarely are you going to hear indecent language on the floor of the Senate or the House. In the House, there's actually a restriction on indecent language. The point being that when we're talking about the heart of free speech, which is communicating ideas, opinions, viewpoints, you don't have to use the F word to communicate a viewpoint. You know, and historically, we have made that distinction, you know, the difference between an opinion, a view that nobody likes. Clearly, that's why we have a First Amendment. But the First Amendment was never intended to give somebody the right to go out in the middle of Central Park with a bullhorn and curse as much as they want and drive most of the rest of the people out of the park. You know, that's not why we have a First Amendment.

Speaker 1: It's an interesting point. But even if that's not the reason for the First Amendment, that doesn't mean that we can't say, you know what, when it comes to the argument of protecting kids, which I read a little bit about on your website, and when it comes to figuring out the rating systems for movies, I mean, it seems it's so completely subjective to say that those things, going out into Central Park and just yelling out profanity would be in some way against the law. It's just something about it feels very antiquated and puritan and outdated to me, does it not? I mean, I'm guessing you don't agree.

Speaker 2: Well, I tell you, you know, you know, unfortunately, I guess there isn't a whole lot of history to the broadcast indecency law. But what little history I am aware of, I think I'm on safe ground in saying that the restriction on broadcast indecency didn't just develop out of thin air.

Speaker 1: No, it didn't.

Speaker 2: It, you know, it developed in real space, you know, not that it would be wise for our government to say that every single four letter word should be, you know, if you utter one four letter word in public, no matter what the circumstances, perhaps even in private, you've committed a crime. I don't know if that certainly, you know, I don't think that has ever been the universal law in the United States. There may have been some very religious communities where that was true. I don't know. But the bottom line is that, you know, if you were out in a public street or a public place and you started talking, you know, with dirty words, you know, at some point, most assuredly, you could and would be arrested. So the broadcast medium comes along that, you know, those restraints were simply applied to the broadcast medium.

Speaker 1: Fair enough. Fair enough. I follow. I follow that. I mean, in the last couple of minutes we have left here, do you think that the FCC should have any jurisdiction over satellite radio programming like Howard Stern, for example?

Speaker 2: Well, I'd say the distinction I make is between a subscription channel, you know, for a while it looked like they were, you know, I don't know if you know the story of Opie and Anthony. They had, you know, sex in public place, you know, contest and somebody tried to have sex in St. Patrick's Cathedral. And you know, they got booted from their broadcast station. They went to satellite. And for a short period of time, I don't know if it was XM or the Sirius, but they were on a subscription channel. Right. And to me, that would have been the happy compromise. If you as an adult want to, you know, listen to the kind of nonsense that Opie and Anthony and Howard Stern and other people like that, I shouldn't be like that. I don't want to be. But, you know, fine. But don't put it out so that when dad and mom are driving in the countryside in the rented car with the kids in the backseat, they turn the radio on, they're going to hear all this stuff. You know, one example. Now, so do you. I'm not trying to silence all vulgarity. It's certainly on cable. I think there are subscription channels where not that anything should go on HBO. But in my opinion, if you bring that pig pen into your home, you've made a decision to do that.

Speaker 1: So, Robert, I take it you're a Howard Stern fan. It sounds like.

Speaker 2: Oh, no, no, I'm not. But I tell you, you know, it's never been my goal to ban the guy from society. You know, for a while, if the courts had exercised a little more common sense than they're normally capable of in this area, I mean, Howard Stern would have, you know, he'd have been on after midnight. That would have been fine with me. You want to talk like you're in a burlesque house and that's the kind of content that Howard Stern puts out over the airwaves. Well, at bare minimum, you shouldn't be on in the daytime hours, go into the midnight hour or be on a satellite station that the adults who want to listen to burlesque type entertainment entertainment can tune you in. But, you know, it's funny. It's always broadcast out over the airwaves, whether it's from a, you know, a station or a satellite.

Speaker 1: It's just it's always funny to me. Conservative media groups and in general, conservative conservative groups seem so angry and against what Howard Stern does, yet they're completely aware of what he's doing. It's very obvious that he's very much on their radar. Isn't there something funny about that?

Speaker 2: Well, I tell you, you know, thankfully, at least from my perspective, Howard Stern is pretty much fallen off the you know, interesting. I don't know. Shock. Radio shock jobs in general have pretty much fallen off the news focus. I was talking to somebody the other day who informed me they're still alive and well. But you know, Howard Stern generates virtually no media coverage in terms of, you know, the content of his programs. So I'm assuming he's as bad as he's ever been. But it's not generating the kind of publicity it generated when he was on broadcast radio.

Speaker 1: Well, we've been speaking with Robert Peters, president of Morality in Media. Thanks so much for calling in today.

Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: OK, take care.

Speaker 2: Bye.