The Federal Communications Commission, Essay Example

The Federal Communications Commission (hereinafter: FCC) is an American government agency that operates with an autonomous status. Its task is to monitor non-governmental media, such as television and radio. The FCC was empowered by the U.S. government with the Communications Act of 1934. With the explosion of independent radio stations and the opening of the airwaves, the 1920s experienced a boom period in the appearance of independent media. The government intervened and required licensing to be given to such stations. The FCC is a corollary of this act, empowered with the monitoring of such stations, and able to enact fines on stations or take away their licensing. The actions of the FCC are legally based in obscenity law, which as Ruschmann notes, appears in the American courts’ decision to “follow the reasoning of a British decision, The Queen v. Hicklin…under which a work could be found obscene.” (16) As consequence, the FCC essentially can determine which acts are obscene or not and act accordingly.

The obvious tension inherent to the power of the FCC is its potential violation of First Amendment rights, which stipulate the right to freedom of speech. However, as Ruschmann observes, “during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the government had almost unlimited power to ban obscenity, which was considered outside the First Amendment’s protection.” (16) The gradual lessening of the government’s power, evident in the 1950s, made the FCC’s task essentially more difficult, as the definition of such obscenity became less extensive: the First Amendment rights essentially extended their scope.

Accordingly, the effects of the FCC are largely controversial, to the extent that the FCC marks an ambiguous point in which questions appear as to where the First Amendment protections begin and end. FCC essentially limits free speech and at the same time is the moderator of obscenity. For this reason, the very presence of the FCC may be considered a paradox when contrasted to the existence of the First Amendment.