Calls for the FCC to sanction “hate speech” over the air waves have begun.

Of course, while Imus is broadcast over radio, for the FCC to require MSNBC to attend “diversity training” would require expanding FCC jurisdiction to cable television.

Like most feeding frenzy stories these days, everyone seems to have walked away from this having learned the wrong lessons.

On Meet the Press Sunday morning, Tim Russert had a panel of experts who were either atoning for their appearances on Imus (like Russert himself), calling for broad censorship of “hurtful” commentary, or–like David Brooks–using the whole episode to smugly assert the problems of a “polluted culture.” All also said it was time to clean up rap music.

No one, not a single person, made anything resembling a defense of free speech.

I’m more pessimistic than the article linked above. I think that if the Supreme Court wanted to, it could easily get to an FCC that regulates all media, including satellite radio, cable TV, and the Internet (the latter would be harder to pull off in practice, but I can certainly see the FCC giving it a shot). The “pervasiveness” argument is there for the taking. The Supreme Court just hasn’t reached for it yet.

(The FCC’s authority is currently limited by the argument that spectrum is limited, and therefore public property, and therefore government is obligated to distribute it, and police it for the public good. It’s an antiquated argument (there’s plenty of spectrum to go around), but it at least limits the FCC’s jurisdiction. The alternative embraced by the moral right–and now the politically correct left–is to give the FCC jurisdiction over any media that is “pervasive,” regardless of whether any part of it is publicly owned. That argument would let the FCC police just about every medium out there.)

And once the FCC has the authority, all it’ll take is the right appointments and the right Imus-life firestorm for the agency to begin finding it necessary to enforce not just Janet jackson’s boob, but Imus-like lapses in political correctness.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 3:48 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.