Federal regulators are attempting to hit a Virginia television station with the maximum $325,000 fine for broadcasting “extremely graphic and explicit sexual material.”
According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), CBS affiliate WDBJ in Roanoke, Va., included an image of a hand stroking an erect penis during a 2012 evening news report about a former porn star who had joined a local volunteer rescue squad.
The charges are the first action the FCC has taken against a TV station for indecency since 2008.
{mosads}“Our action here sends a clear signal that there are severe consequences for TV stations that air sexually explicit images when children are likely to be watching,” Travis LeBlanc, the head of the FCC’s enforcement bureau, said in a statement.
The TV station has asserted that the image was “extremely fleeting and partial” and was unintentionally added to the newscast.
In a statement, station president Jeffrey Marks said that the station would fight the fine, which he called “unprecedented.”
But the FCC rejected that argument, saying that the image was “patently offensive” and that a punishment was required regardless of whether or not it was intentional.
“Having made the choice to gather and display images from an adult film website as part of its newscast, WDJB is subject to sanction for its broadcast of actionably indecent sexual material without taking adequate precautions to avoid such result,” the agency said in its notice about the action.
Advocates of television decency were thrilled at the news.
Tim Winter, the president of the Parents Television Council, called the proposed fine “a victory for families” that “serves as a powerful reminder to broadcasters who borrow the public’s airwaves that they must abide by the law.”
Winter’s group has criticized the FCC for not doing more to combat explicit material on TV, and said that Monday’s action “must not be the conclusion of indecency enforcement.”
The last major action from the FCC against a TV station occurred in 2008, when the agency fined ABC stations over an “NYPD Blue” episode that showed a woman nude from behind.
— Updated at 11:51 p.m.