CHICAGO -- Citizens for Community Values of Illinois and Chicago's WKQX-FM radio have locked horns in a battle over obscenity and free speech.
David Smith, director of CCV, has filed 67 obscenity complaints with the FCC for the on air content of "Mancow's Morning Madhouse", hosted by Eric "Mancow" Muller. Fines have been levied against WKQX-FM for six of the complaints and over thirty are yet to be decided. Smith has made no complaints against any other radio program.
Muller filed a $3 million lawsuit for harassment against Smith and CCV in response.
"There is free speech and there is harassment...this is not about free speech, this is about harassment," said Muller. "It is about the First Amendment. This is bigger than my silly little radio show. Do we want to allow a (religious) zealot, to determine what we get to see and hear?"
Much of the debate concerns whether a broadcast program conforms to "community standards." This is particularly problematical in the case of Muller's program. Smith's complaint is the only one that generated a FCC notice of inquiry. There has been no general community outcry. One man has effectively set the community standard for broadcast program content with federal government approval.
The air waves battle between Muller and decency activist Smith was also featured on Page One of Thursday's Wall Street Journal in a story entitled, "One Man's Campaign To Rid Radio of Smut Is Finally Paying Off."
WSJ's Staff reporter Sarah McBride brought national attention to the Chicago feud between Muller and Smith over the controversial sexual content of Muller's daily radio broadcast "Mancow's Morning Madhouse."
Since Smith, the father of two toddlers living in the southern Chicago area, began filing complaints on Muller's broadcasts in 1999, the Federal Communications Commission fined Muller's employer, Emmis Communications, for two offenses totaling $14,000 in 2001 and four offenses totaling $28,000 in 2002.
Smith has filed over seventy complaints on Muller's show over the last five years. The FCC is now working through 2002 complaints.
But, as the WSJ story says, after the Super Bowl episode with the worldwide televised revelation of Janet Jackson's right breast and the resulting half million complaints from viewers, the FCC shifted into a higher gear of enforcing decency on public air waves.
Michael Powell, the FCC Chairman, told network talk shows what he saw as he and his two children (Secretary of State Colin Powell's grandchildren) saw as they watched the football game's halftime performance personally disturbed him.
Since that time, the FCC has cracked down on radio and television broadcasts, enforcing community decency standards. Shock jock Howard Stern was driven off the air in some markets and Muller has felt the pressure to clean up his act in Chicago.
While the fines of $42,000 may seem to be minimal to a multi-million-dollar company like Emmis Communications, Muller's contract says that he must personally pay for any indecency fines that are imposed on his host company.
The WSJ story said:
Through a process of trial and error, Mr. Muller has tried to pinpoint how far he can go. The answer: not very far. Sometimes he previews risky material for the program director, Mike Stern, but he realizes: "If you have to ask, the answer is no." Other times he just goes with it on the air, tempting a lecture from the boss.
The supercop role doesn't sit easily with Mr. Stern, especially when he has to nix ideas at the show's weekly planning meetings. "Things will really get rolling, and then all the heads will turn to me. 'Can we do that?' " Mr. Stern says. "There are times when you just have to say, 'Guys, no.' "
A few weeks ago, for example, Mr. Muller wanted to broadcast a joke with a punch line about sex with a goat. Mr. Stern vetoed it in advance. "A couple of years ago, we wouldn't have flinched," he says.
Muller, frustrated with the crackdown, has retaliated by filing a lawsuit against David Smith and the group he was working with while filing the complaints, Citizens for Community Values. Muller is suing Smith, who recently left his job at a Chicago alderman's office to work fulltime for the family values non-profit group Illinois Family Institute, and part time as a church janitor and school bus driver, for $3 milliion.
Citizens for Community Values issued an appeal to help with the legal defense of Smith yesterday.
