We are the customers, it is our preferences that the media must ultimately serve, and thus we must be willing as a society to exercise that power to get what we want. We certainly should turn off, tune out, walk away and raise our voices when disturbed by what is peddled to us. But, we should think twice before allowing the government the discretion to filter information to us as they see fit, for the King always takes his ransom.”

The above is taken from FCC Commissioner Michael Powell upon accepting the Media Institute’s Freedom of Speech Award, 1999.

April 8, 2004: The FCC under Michael Powell imposes a record-setting $495,000 fine to Clear Channel for indecency violations by Howard Stern.

What constitutes the greatest threat to America’s future — mass-murdering terrorists, unfunded entitlement obligations that number in trillions of dollars, the proliferation of weapons that can vaporize large cities or naughty language on television and radio? If you answered the latter, you just might be qualified to join the FCC. Last week the commission imposed its largest single fine ever — $495,000 spanning 18 violations and six stations, with the maximum fine of $27,500 imposed for each complaint.

Democratic member of the commission and longtime scold Michael Copps howled for blood in his statement regarding the ruling: “I have long advocated that the Commission use all of the tools it has to tackle indecency on the public’s airwaves. Today’s decision is a step forward toward imposing meaningful fines. For the first time, the Commission assesses a fine against more than a single utterance, rather than counting an entire program as one utterance.”

Such isn’t extraordinary coming from Copps — the same day, when the FCC also fined Emmis Radio $14,000 over indecency by Chicago radio personality Mancow, Copps dissented, calling the action “woefully inadequate,” arguing that “such fines will be easily absorbed as a ‘cost of doing business.'”

It should also be noted that Copps isn’t just out to hunt down filth on the radio — his crusade has recently hit upon the gold mine of moral decadence in America: Daytime television soap operas, where he has proposed investigating whether such racy programs violate FCC broadcast indecency regulations. “It was pretty steamy stuff for the middle of the afternoon,” Copps told the Washington Times. One almost secretly hopes that Mr. Copps never stumbles upon Cinemax after 9 p.m. if daytime soaps manage to offend his puritan sensibilities.

Where is our formerly market-oriented FCC chairman amongst all of this? Apparently, he’s too busy fretting about Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction” and U2 lead singer Bono’s dropping of the F-bomb during the Emmys to remember that consumers still have the ability (and indeed, responsibility) to change the channel when they come upon something offensive.

This small fact seems to have been lost on the Commission as a whole, which has gone berserk in handing out fines for broadcast indecency, as if media consumers were simply helpless victims completely at the mercy of predatory smut-peddlers who have nothing better to do than corrupt otherwise morally upstanding Americans.

But just in case they missed the memo, here’s a hint: The mechanism for punishing lurid daytime soaps and foul-mouthed radio personalities already exists — it’s called tuning out. The only reason these programs thrive is that there is a willing public to consume them — whether or not one “approves” of the tastes of the plebeian masses is none of the government’s business.

The common canard about the airwaves being for the “public good” is no more true here than with any other commodity — “public good” should be up for the consumers to decide with their radio dials and television remotes, not by a cabal of faceless bureaucrats.

Thus the true driving force behind the FCC’s actions is laid bare — self-preservation. After all, if consumers actually took responsibility for their own programming rather than relying on the government, most of the FCC would be out of a job. Indeed, what mandate is left for these busybodies other than to regulate allocation of the spectrum, which could easily be parceled out and sold like property or any other scarce good?