Jeff Jarvis (BuzzMachine) writes:
Among all the absurd, meddling, and stupid rulings from the FCC lately, this one really takes the Twinkie: The FCC fined a station for making a phony phone call to the real Fidel Castro — and getting him on the line — but not following commission rules about getting permission to put the person on the air.
InstaPundit seems to agree, suggesting that “There should be an exception for making fun of dictators” (though I’m not sure how serious he is).
The FCC, though, is in a difficult position here. Though the government has (rightly or wrongly) broader authority to regulate over-the-air radio and television broadcasts than it has over newspapers, books, the Internet, and other media — it may, for instance, restrict profanity, and require broadcasters to carry opposing views — it probably does not have the power to impose viewpoint-based restrictions. I doubt that the government is constitutionally entitled, for instance, to ban songs that glorify illegal drugs (though in fact the FCC did do this in the early 1970s), or to require broadcasters to provide equal time for opponents of racist views but not for opponents of egalitarian views.
Likewise, much as I sympathize with criticism of Castro, I don’t think the FCC’s broadcast speech regulations can discriminate in favor of this viewpoint any more than they can discriminate in favor of other viewpoints. So if one thinks that the FCC’s general rule — a broadcaster can’t just call you and then unbeknownst to you publicly broadcast the conversation — is generally sound, then the FCC can’t make any Castro exception or dictator exception to that. (They might conceivably create a viewpoint-neutral exception for political humor, but that would be a pretty broad exception, probably broad enough to swallow a huge chunk of the rule.)
UPDATE: A couple of people suggested that the FCC could create a viewpoint-neutral exception for unauthorized broadcast of conversations with public figures. I think such an exception would be constitutional, but again I suspect that many supporters of the basic rule would oppose it. If you think that it’s dishonest to surreptitiously broadcast your phone conversations with people, then I suspect you’d think it’s dishonest even when it’s done to, say, a local politician, a prominent scholar, a well-known movie star, and the like. That the person is a public figure might make something of a difference, but I doubt that it would make enough of a difference to change the proper outcome. I can certainly understand why the FCC would be hesitant to create such an exception.
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