AFTRA Testifies at Decency Forum

[SOURCE: American Federation of Television and Radio Artists]
The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) today testified before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee’s “Open Forum on Decency.” As a representative of broadcasters and recording artists, AFTRA expressed grave concerns about certain provisions contained in the bill addressing this subject that was passed by the House of Representatives. Tom Carpenter, AFTRA’s General Counsel/Director of Legislative Affairs, told the Senate Committee: "The airwaves belong to the American people. The government holds this valuable resource in trust in granting licenses to private companies to use that valuable public resource, and to exploit it for profit. Our telecommunications policy is predicated on the idea that the quid pro quo for free access to exploit this public resource is that the public interest should be served. This is an important distinction. Licensees get access to a public resource and they should be expected to serve the public interest. But individual citizens are not licensed; they are employees who are hired to be the faces and voices on the air. They are individuals who work for media companies, and are employed pursuant to employment contracts. Those employment contracts provide that individuals can be disciplined or fired for either failing to comply with the employer’s policies, or failing to comply with FCC regulations. But at the root of all this is the fundamental principle that licensees, not individuals, are responsible for programming decisions. Individuals who do not bear the public service obligations of holding an FCC license should not be held liable for the programming decisions that their employers make. It is one thing for the government to fine a licensee for failing its obligations to meet the public interest. It’s a very different matter, and one that raises serious First Amendment implications, for government entities to fine an individual for the content of his or her speech, merely because someone else chose to broadcast it."
http://www.aftra.org/press/pr_2005_11_29_decencytestimony.html