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Abstract: The Federal Communications Commission proceeds to further erode broadcasters’ and our, First Amendment Freedoms. Not content with their newly invigorated inquisition against sexuality – dubbed “indecency” --on the air, and likely emboldened by the disturbingly tepid protest this crusade has thus far provoked, the commissioners now have launched a campaign against televised violence. To the always unpalatable legend “Edited for Television” we now truly can add, “By Your Friends at the FCC.” When the V-chip and its accompanying ratings system were imposed on broadcasters just a few years ago, some in the industry took the approach all too common among business supplicants at the mercy of government regulators: “It’s not so bad, and anyway we have to go along to get along. Accepting this level of regulation will stave off even more drastic controls." Some were mollified by a loose promise of a limited congressional moratorium on further action. But the Censor’s raison d’etre is to censor; the Censor cannot be so easily appeased.
First Amendment, censorship, television
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