Unclear our airwaves

Janet, your nipple ruined everything.\nOr, at least Janet Jackson's flashed breast during the Super Bowl broke the last barrier, and gone with it is our last bit of tolerance for people who pushed the envelope on television and radio. But when everybody overreacted to Janet's bosom, they proverbially threw a gallon of kerosene on an already fiery attempt to clean up the airwaves.\nLast week, the nation's largest radio chain, Clear Channel Communications, took shock jock Howard Stern off the air in six markets because his show did not meet newly revised programming standards. The day before, Clear Channel also fired a Florida DJ known as "Bubba the Love Sponge," whose show drew a fine from the Federal Communications Commission of $755,000. \n Congress is now considering increasing the maximum fine for one on-air indecency tenfold from $27,500 to $275,000, a move supported by the FCC even before Janet's mammary. \nA panel of five commissioners, headed by FCC chairman Michael Powell, levies fines if broadcast content is "patently offensive" as measured by contemporary community standards, whatever those are. \nTo re-emphasize: Five unelected people have years to peruse transcripts and define the blurry and vague concept of "patently offensive."\nLocally, radio personalities Bob Kevoian and Tom Griswold of "The Bob & Tom Show," which is syndicated from Indianapolis to more than 130 radio stations coast to coast by Clear Channel, said they will pull back, clean up their show and not tread near Clear Channel's zero-tolerance rule.\nGranted, as a private company, Clear Channel is within its rights to impose strict decency rules for employees if it chooses to. But that doesn't make the company any less of a censor than the overzealous hawks in Congress and on the FCC.\nWhat to do, what to do? The government takes more control of the airwaves and media giants -- who no one thought would have anything to be afraid of -- now run in fear! Any check between government and free market goes right out the window, along with all those dirty words.\nSo the deeper it goes, the trickier the issue is to solve, if it can be solved at all. Conventional wisdom says what everybody already knows: change the channel if you don't want to see it or hear it. We don't doubt a balance is needed between allowing speech and avoiding offensiveness. Fines work, yes; but $275,000 for a slip of the tongue is too harsh. \nThis is an issue the public should be mature about. Through the processes to clean up the airwaves, more allowed speech may be restricted than real obscenity prevented. \nThe system we had before, albeit flawed, was working fine. Don't overhaul the way you handle indecency, FCC. Janet's nipple didn't make the world a more vulgar place than it already was; it just ruined our ability to interpret it rationally.