Parents don't need the FCC to protect their children

[Commentary] Where are you likelier to encounter dirty language and coarse culture -- in unregulated newspapers or regulated broadcast television?

Standards have only fallen since the federal government started monitoring broadcasting for indecency in the 1970s. This month a federal appeals court invalidated a generation's worth of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations on indecency (a distinct legal category from obscenity, which is outside of First Amendment protection). The court stressed that technology had changed so much there was no longer a rationale for regulating programming -- that broadcasting, like print, is also entitled to be free of government control. If other courts follow this ruling and the FCC reduces its monitoring of decency standards, what will be the result? The Hollywood Reporter's headline on the opinion predicted, "Primetime to get racier after FCC ruling," but it's already plenty racy. This fall CBS plans a show called "$#*! My Dad Says," based on a Twitter feed whose name includes a word unsuitable for a family newspaper -- and, apparently, still for CBS. The better argument is that the FCC unintentionally contributed to the coarsening of the culture by claiming the ability to parse which words used when are decent or indecent. If there are seven dirty words, does that make all the others decent -- and indeed government-approved? Broadcasters now shirk responsibility for a family environment by saying they try to abide inherently vague federal standards. And parents may wrongly assume that FCC monitoring will prevent indecency such as the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.

No medium is likely ever to be as pervasive as broadcasting once was. Technology makes it easier to block seven or any number of dirty words. It helps parents who prefer that children instead watch Thomas and the other trains for life lessons from W.V. Awdry. Taking the FCC out of regulating indecency might just lead to more decency by refocusing responsibility where it belongs: on broadcasters and parents.