WDBJ Fights FCC Indecency Fine

CBS affiliate WDBJ-TV Roanoke (VA) has filed its opposition to the Federal Communications Commission's proposed $325,000 indecency fine, which the FCC imposed for a brief video clip, albeit of a sexual organ, which the station says was inadvertently included in a story about a "controversy in Cave Spring, Va." That opposition includes a challenge to the FCC's indecency policy statement that was issued under then FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski but never adopted by the commission as official policy.

In a 55-page filing at the FCC that included a long list of awards to the station for its news coverage, WDBJ attorneys said there were a number of reasons why the FCC's fine was off the mark, including that the broadcast did not violate the FCC's indecency policy, that imposing the fine violates the First Amendment, that WDBJ lacked the necessary "scienter," a legal term for meaning to do what it did, and that even if a fine were warranted, imposing the maximum fine -- the highest ever proposed for a single incident -- for an inadvertent and momentary display was not warranted. The filing says the fine proposal rests on numerous erroneous assumptions, including that the image was visible to station personnel, that there had been ample time to screen it before air, that the error could have been prevented if station personnel were more attentive, and that the material was plainly visible to the audience