FCC vs. Media Monopolies, or vs. Eminem?

Perhaps the biggest radio hit of 2000 was "The Real Slim Shady," a scatological, sexually lurid rap song from Eminem's Grammy-nominated The Marshall Mathers LP.

But if you wanted the raw, uncensored version, you had to buy the CD. The version that was played thousands of times on radio stations across the country had been edited to eliminate all the dirty words. That way, broadcasters wouldn't get in trouble with the Federal Communications Commission.

An abridgment of the First Amendment's free-speech guarantee? Absolutely. But it fit with the loose understanding that radio executives had with their governmental lords and masters: stay away from George Carlin's infamous seven words and you'll be left alone.

Or not, as it turns out. In a decision that is as chilling as it is mind-boggling, the FCC earlier this month fined KKMG Radio, an FM station based in Colorado Springs, for playing the edited version of "The Real Slim Shady" -- the exact same edited version you heard so many times last summer. Even after the song had been cleaned up, the FCC ruled, "portions of the lyrics contain sexual references in conjunction with sexual expletives that appear intended to pander and shock."

How was it that KKMG was singled out and fined $7000? Opportunity, plain and simple. An offended listener filed a complaint with the FCC, complete with a lyric sheet she had downloaded from the Internet. And the FCC acted on the complaint.

In other words, what happened in Colorado Springs could happen anywhere.

Unfortunately, the decision says much about George W. Bush's FCC chairman, Michael Powell. When it comes to the desires of huge media conglomerates to combine and expand, Powell is a classic libertarian. But when it comes to artistic freedom, he has no problem enforcing government regulations of the most onerous sort.

As is so often the case, the silencing of Eminem -- indeed, the FCC's entire regulatory structure -- is based on the perceived need to protect children from whatever the mainstream deems to be naughty. As the FCC itself notes in its finding against KKMG, "The Commission's authority to restrict the broadcast of indecent materials extends to times when there is a reasonable risk that children may be in the audience." Thus we have the FCC's so-called safe harbor, a 10 p.m.--to--6 a.m. time slot when broadcasters can assume adults make up their audience. Outside that safe harbor, indecent speech can be restricted so as not to warp young minds.

"Protection of children is a frequent justification that's used for censorship that's essentially based on taste or morality rather than any well-founded psychological understanding of adolescent development," says Marjorie Heins, director of the National Coalition Against Censorship's Free Expression Policy Project and author of the recently published Not in Front of the Children: "Indecency," Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth (Hill and Wang). And Heins cites an even more egregious example of FCC censorship: a $7000 fine recently levied against KBOO Radio, a small, community FM station in Portland, Oregon, for playing Sarah Jones's feminist rap song "Your Revolution," with its defiant line "Your revolution will not happen between these thighs."

The FCC has always arrogated unto itself the power to censor even in the absence of an obvious language faux pas such as, most obviously, the F-word. The agency defines indecent speech "as language that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory activities or organs." That's pretty broad, and it's what enabled the agency a decade ago to fine Infinity Broadcasting a reported $2.1 million for Howard Stern's lewd-and-crude programming, even though neither Stern nor his guests ever crossed the Carlin line. So in that sense, the action against KKMG is nothing new.