provocative reading

Tom Mathews
Chapter Corporate Accountability Issue Leader

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Subj:    [corp-focus] Indecent
Date:   04-03-24 13:28:31 EST
From:   [log in to unmask] (Robert Weissman)
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Indecent
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

Whatever you think about broadcast obscenity, it is hard to make the
case that a disk jockey cursing causes greater social harm than someone
who puts another person's life in danger.

But that, apparently, is how Congress looks at things.

Under the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2004, which passed the
House of Representatives earlier this month and is likely soon to come
up for consideration in the Senate, television and radio stations that
broadcast "indecent" material can be subject to fines as high as
$500,000 per incident.

Under the nation's worker safety rules, an employer that commits a
"serious" violation -- defined as "a violation where there is
substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result
and that the employer knew, or should have known, of the hazard" may be
fined up to $7,000 per violation. If an employer engages in a "willful"
violation of the rules -- meaning "the employer intentionally and
knowingly commits" the violation -- it may fined up to $70,000.

It's not just penalties for violations of worker safety laws that are
dwarfed by the proposed fines for indecency. Environmental fines,
considerably more robust than workplace penalties, generally pale in
comparison to the proposed sanctions for broadcast indecency. (The fines
for the worst violations of the Clean Air Act, for example, top out at
$10,000 per day per violation.)

Beyond the stunning misplaced sense of priorities, there's a lot to
learn from the juxtaposition of the proposed penalties for broadcast
indecency and those for other forms of corporate wrongdoing.

That's because the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act is intended to be a
serious law exercising a serious deterrent function. Other regulatory
regimes are not.

There are at least three features of the broadcast bill that should be
imported into other corporate law-and-order rules.

First is the size of the fines, which are big enough to make any company
take notice, especially because they can easily be compounded by
citation for numerous violations.

Second, the broadcast bill posits fines for both companies and
individuals -- for both broadcasters and their employees or performers.
The analog would be for fines to be levied against both corporations
that endangered their workers, and against the CEO or floor manager who
was responsible for permitting dangerous conditions to exist.

Third, the broadcast bill threatens the death penalty against violators
of indecency rules. The bill directs the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) to consider violations of indecency rules in making
their determination as to whether renew broadcast licenses. Without
these licenses, broadcasters cannot use the public airwaves, and would
be out of business. For repeat violators -- those with three or more
violations -- the bill commands the FCC to commence a proceeding as to
whether it should revoke the violator's broadcast license.

For better or worse, there's no question that, if enacted, the broadcast
indecency bill will have the intended deterrent effect. Just look at
radio colossus Clear Channel's effort to distance itself from Howard
Stern and deejays crossing the obscenity lines.

Profit-maximizing economic actors take seriously significant penalties,
especially threats to their ongoing viability.

Would that the Congress be willing to impose such sanctions against
corporate scofflaws that threaten the safety of people and the planet.


Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter, http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com. Robert Weissman is
editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor,
http://www.multinationalmonitor.org. They are co-authors of Corporate
Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe,
Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.corporatepredators.org).

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

This article is posted at:
<http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2004/000176.html>
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