At our deadline, congressional leaders continued trying to raise F...

At our deadline, congressional leaders continued trying to raise FCC fines for indecent content broadcast over public airwaves -- an effort delayed by a hold from at least one Democratic senator. Efforts to attach indecency provisions to the Defense Dept. Authorization Bill (HR-4200) failed late Thurs. Senate Armed Services Committee ranking Democrat Levin (Mich.) had refused to separate Sen. Dorgan’s (D-N.D.) media ownership provision and Sen. Hollings’ (D-S.C.) violence provision from Sen. Brownback’s (R-Kan.) amendment that would raise fines for indecency to $500,000 per utterance, with a $3 million maximum for each incident (CD Oct 8 p9). Fri., senators seeking to pass indecency legislation tried to bring to the Senate floor HR-3717, indecency legislation that passed the House this year. Senators amended HR-3717 to include a compromise between House Commerce Committee Chmn. Barton (R-Tex.), House Telecom Subcommittee Chmn. Upton (R-Mich.), Brownback and Ensign that would include: (1) Mitigating factors to be considered in setting indecency fines. (2) A 9-month “shot clock” for FCC action on indecency complaints. (3) A GAO study on indecency. (4) FCC report to Congress on indecency. (5) A sense of Congress statement that the NAB should establish a family viewing policy. The agreement doesn’t include the “3 strikes” rule, which would require the FCC to hold a license revocation hearing after 3 FCC indecency findings. Sen. Ensign (R-Nev.) opposed the “3 strikes” rule. Brownback, Ensign and Dorgan co-sponsored the bill in the Senate, which comes after family TV groups blamed Dorgan for “killing” the indecency fine on the DoD bill Thurs. night. Senate sources said Dorgan convinced Levin not to separate the indecency rules from Dorgan’s controversial media ownership provisions, which doomed the amendment. The Parents TV Council said early Fri. that despite the fact that Dorgan had been a “stalwart partner” in the fight against indecency, his “selfish actions” on media ownership had killed the bill. “He knew full well that this would kill any chance of the indecency provision being passed,” PTC Pres. Brent Bozell said. Senate sources said late Fri. a Democratic senator had placed a hold on the bill and Senate Minority Leader Daschle (D- S.D.) was working to have the hold released. Sources said Democrats didn’t want to be seen as having killed a broadcast decency bill weeks before a national election. Fri. afternoon, PTC issued a statement praising Dorgan and Ensign and said Democrats needed to make sure the bill was passed. “Senator Daschle and Senate Democrats need to uphold their responsibility to American families to ensure commonsense decency standards on public television,” Bozell said. But Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America said the failure of indecency legislation was the fault of the Republican leadership. “Republican leaders had every opportunity to deal with indecency either in conjunction with or separate from the issues of media ownership and TV violence and any effort to blame the sponsors of these amendments for the failure of the indecency bill are wholly without merit,” the groups said in a joint statement. Both favor media ownership controls proposed by Dorgan.