A NATIONAL OBSCENITY STANDARD
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Any discussion of a national obscenity standard must begin with the question: Does one exist? The 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Miller v. California, along with subsequent clarifying decisions, declared that from then on local communities would in effect establish their own rules and standards of what was and was not obscene. WhatÆs more, the court ôspecifically rejected the concept of a nationwide æcontemporary community standard,Æ and left to the individual statesö to determine the scope of the community upon which questionable material might be judged (Linz, 1994, 82). Thus, at the time many thought this might abolish for good any thought of a national standard. Not surprisingly, however, considering the unpredictability of American public life, the high courtÆs ruling has raised surprising questions and had some unexpected side effects û until now, a national obscenity standard of the de facto type appears to loom on the horizon.The courtÆs landmark 1973 decision ôwas based on the commonsense assumption that enough differences exist between communities to warrant each community having its own standardö (Winick, 1994, 405). However, in the years since, either the country has changed or the basis of the ruling may have been invalid in the first place. For on the one hand, growing evidence indicates that similarities in taste and tolerance may far outweigh any supposed differences. On the one other hand, the pattern may not be so c
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rts. The so-called Seven Words standard became the ultimate, if not the sole, criteria for judging airwave obscenity, and the FCC took no indecency or obscenity actions against radio or TV broadcasters from 1978 to 1987.
Congress and the FCC began receiving a large number of complaints in the mid-1980s from viewers and listeners who said broadcasters by that time were saying just about anything û as long as they avoided the seven dirty words. The FCC subsequently revised the standard to a more generic one that was also upheld in the 1978 high court ruling. ôThus, nonexplicit innuendoes could be rendered explicit if they were surrounded by material that implied a sexual or excretory meaningö (Rivera-Sanchez 1998 145). Between 1987 and 1997, the FCC levied fines upon broadcasters in thirty-six cases. Of those, thirty-six involved live talk programs, mostly involving innuendo, and the majority of the remaining ten were for songs that contained explicit lyrics.
The commission claimed it was guided in its fine-imposing policy by four variables: the context of the violation; the type of indecent language used; whether the material had been previously found indecent; and whether the broadcaster was a repeat offender. However, one
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Approximate Word count = 2790
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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