US regulators will increase the pressure on media outlets to ban foul language from the airwaves, and have broad political support to do so, the top US telecoms regulator said on Thursday.
"We are getting tougher about it in the sense that we're wielding our fines more aggressively, mostly because there is a political will to do so," Michael Powell, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, told Reuters at the World Economic Forum.
"I think the political environment is increasingly becoming less tolerant," Powell added. "It's a reinvigorated approach." Powell's remarks came a day after a bipartisan group of US lawmakers introduced legislation to raise fines for incidents of foul language used on air to as much as $3 million.
US federal law bars the airing of obscene speech and limits the broadcasting of indecent material, containing references to sex or excretion in a patently offensive manner, to late night network television and radio.
Powell said support for raising fines to deter the use of foul language outside of narrowly defined times was coming from a vast spectrum of the US political scene.
"It's quite bipartisan. A lot of the screaming is coming from the left," he said. "It's wrong to think that you see Republican conservatism rising. There is actually a lot of pressure from the secular side."
The proposed legislation follows an outcry over an FCC staff decision that ruled U2 rocker Bono did not violate the agency's indecency rules when he exclaimed "fucking brilliant" when accepting an award on the live broadcast of the Golden Globe Awards last year.
The FCC staff decided in October that Bono's use of the swear word was not indecent. That sparked calls for the FCC commissioners to overturn the decision.
Powell is seen as supporting efforts to make it indecent to utter the word on broadcast television and radio when children are likely to be listening.
Powell said it was the media company's obligation restrict the use of foul language on the air.
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