FCC Fines TV Station for Indecency

I'm not a big fan of indecency fines, but I can see how this one crossed the line. From Tom Taylor's NOW column...

Warning – FCC is back in the indecency business...an accidental three-second Full Monty by a Roanoke TV station in its 6pm news has brought out some serious moralizing and protect-the-kids language from the FCC. For the first time ever, it’s imposing the maximum one-time fine of $325,000 – raised ten-fold in the wake of Janet Jackson’s 2004 Super Bowl nipple-flash. The object of the fine is Roanoke’s WDBJ-TV...First, the Channel 7 news team was doing a feature on “a former [female] adult film star who had joined a local volunteer rescue squad.” Somebody in the newsroom found some clean footage of the actress’ previous line of work online and thought it was okay for airing. But the photojournalist said “when I recorded the screen shots off a computer, I did not notice the small ’boxes’ at the right of the screen showing other films available from the distributor.” That’s when the trouble started. The FCC says viewers could plainly see “the graphic display of an erect [you know what] being stroked during a news report.” Ironically, the image had nothing to do with the local rescue squad volunteer. It snuck into the frame because the journalist didn’t see the box off to the side.