The FCC should stay out of the debate...
The FCC should stay out of the debate on whether the Washington Redskins team name should be deemed a broadcast license-ending infraction, a broadcast attorney said. No current laws or FCC regulations or policies “prohibit broadcast of the word ‘Redskins,’…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
or any other racial epithet for that matter,” said Fletcher Heald attorney Steve Lovelady Monday in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1vrBRkT). Lovelady referred to a petition from John Banzhaf, a George Washington University professor who challenged the license of WWXX-FM Washington. The petition relies on a statute that makes it a criminal offense to broadcast obscene, indecent or profane language on radio or TV, Lovelady said. As inconsistent as the FCC’s enforcement of that provision has been, the provision “has never been held to proscribe racial or ethnic epithets,” he said. Since the term “Redskins” doesn’t have any per se sexual or excretory connotations at all, “much less any offensive ones, it would be impossible to stretch the terms ‘obscene’ or ‘indecent’ to include ‘Redskins,'” he said.