[Commentary] While in the US Senate, new National Association of Broadcasters president Gordon Smith voted in favor of increasing by 10-fold the Federal Communications Commission's fine for broadcast indecency. Now at the NAB, Smith says, "My job now is to help broadcasters who do not favor indecency, who do not promote indecency, to deal with the legal ramification of local community standards. I will help [broadcasters] with that issue because they don't want to be tagged with promoting indecency. That's not what they are in business for. I will help them to get a message out that they respect those standards too." But Jessell doesn't think that many broadcasters "respect" the indecency standards, which reminds them they have fewer First Amendment protections than other media and that expose them to arbitrary fines, now so large they could destroy some stations thanks to Smith and his former Senate peers. Now it is true, for fear of being "tagged with promoting indecency," NAB has sometimes been reluctant to challenge indecency rules because of the political cost. But it was always understood that the NAB didn't like or respect the rules.
