DALE MCFEATTERS Don't try to regulate what you can't define

The problem with trying to regulate speech is that once started there's no place to stop. The Federal Communications Commission and Congress are now learning this the hard way in trying to punish indecency -- whatever that is -- on the airways.
Unfortunately, broadcasters and the rest of us will pay the penalty for this legislative and regulatory foray into censorship.
Here's a recent example: PBS' "Masterpiece Theater" offered member stations two versions of the latest installment of the brilliantly written and acted British police procedural "Prime Suspect." One was expurgated, the other slightly less expurgated.
This was the sixth installment over several years so the viewers knew what they were getting, and the staid demographics of "Masterpiece Theater" suggest this is an audience not so delicate as to need government protection. This self-censorship is offensively patronizing to American viewers, but it kept the FCC off the back of "Masterpiece Theater."
And this fear of huge fines and even loss of license is slopping over into political speech even though it is expressly protected by the First Amendment. According to The New York Times, an Indianapolis radio station used the "dump button," by which a station can intercept a host's words before they go out over the air, 11 times on Rush Limbaugh.
What if?
It would be ironic if the conservative FCC set out to get shock jock Howard Stern, whose huge ratings should tell the FCC something, and got Rush instead, but unintended consequences are an inevitable consequence of trying to regulate speech.
The FCC had it right the first time when it initially declined to do anything about Bono's giddily spontaneous expletive during the Golden Globe Awards. But the FCC was browbeaten into reversing itself and even expanding its restrictions to speech it considers vulgar, profane and even blasphemous. Blasphemous? Does that mean the FCC has an opening for a staff theologian?
Apologists for speech regulation of broadcast radio and TV say well, there's always cable and satellite, but there are indications that the FCC wants to go there as well. Cable is essentially a private contract between the customer and the cable provider in which the customer can pick and choose what comes into the house. Federal regulation there would be like telling people what was acceptable to buy at the bookstore.
The fuzziness of the various definitions of decency and indecency, acceptable and unacceptable speech suggest something else: If you can't adequately define what you're regulating, maybe you shouldn't be regulating it.
Scripps Howard News Service