Here come the “How can you call yourself a moderate?” comments. But we have to say it: I think they’re going nuts:
SAN FRANCISCO (Hollywood Reporter) – The chairman of one of the entertainment industry’s most important congressional committees says he wants to take the enforcement of broadcast decency standards into the realm of criminal prosecution.Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner III, R-Wis., told cable industry executives attending the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. conference here on Monday that criminal prosecution would be a more efficient way to enforce the indecency regulations.
“I’d prefer using the criminal process rather than the regulatory process,” Sensenbrenner told the executives.
The current system — in which the FCC fines a licensee for violating the regulations — casts too wide a net, he said, trapping those who are attempting to reign in smut on TV and those who are not.
“People who are in flagrant disregard should face a criminal process rather than a regulator process,” Sensenbrenner said. “That is the way to go. Aim the cannon specifically at the people committing the offenses, rather than the blunderbuss approach that gets the good actors.
“The people who are trying to do the right thing end up being penalized the same way as the people who are doing the wrong thing.”
It’s increasingly clear that some members of the GOP want the government to be aggressively involved in as many aspects of American life as possible — increasingly exercising policing powers. The question is whether this kind of attitude will be supported by the GOP’s libertarian branch.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.