
Those of us who are familiar with the FCC’s history in the enforcement of “content” regulations -- generally, dirty words and the like -- don’t really expect the commission
to come out with a ruling banning the word “Redskins” on TV.
Or if the commission actually takes the unusual (and near-unprecedented) step of banning the word, it’s
highly doubtful the ban will be well-enforced (if at all) -- and it probably wouldn’t survive a court test if someone wanted to go so far as to challenge it in that manner.
The issue
arises today because of the news that the FCC has confirmed it is considering a complaint petition recently filed at the commission about the Redskins team name. According to a story on Variety.com, this petition is the brainchild of a local college professor in Washington -- John Banzhaf of George Washington
University Law School -- who seeks to address the Redskins name issue by filing a challenge to an FM radio station license held by Redskins owner Dan Snyder.
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The professor’s petition
“contends that the word [Redskins] is an 'offensive demeaning racial swear word'," the Variety story says. And, his logic continues, since the FCC has the authority to regulate content
on the broadcast airwaves (although you can practically count the number of times it has done so on one hand), the commission should be interested in considering the word “Redskin” for
prohibition. In the context of the team owner’s broadcast license, the linkage here has to do with this licensee’s “fitness” to possess this radio station license, given the
“offensive” name of another company he owns. Get it?
The reason there are stories turning up everywhere about this petition this morning is because FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler told
reporters that the commission is actually considering this petition.
Of course, that’s not exactly news; the FCC is obligated to “consider” every petition it receives, no
matter how unglued (for the most part). It doesn’t mean the commission will emerge from this “consideration” with a ruling that bans the word “Redskins” from being
uttered on TV (and radio) anytime soon. But if it did, presumably such a ban would include penalties such as fines levied against sportscasters who use the word in the course of calling football
games.
In an interview a few weeks ago, Chairman Wheeler voiced his own personal opposition to the word. About a year ago, during halftime of an NBC Sunday Night Football game, Bob Costas
revealed that he thinks the name should be retired. More recently, “The Daily Show” came out against the name at the conclusion of the bit the show aired last week in which correspondent
Jason Jones interviewed diehard Redskins fans who love the name and basically made fun of them.
This past summer, as the current NFL season was preparing to begin, some football broadcasters
and at least one newspaper that we know of -- the New York Daily News -- announced they would cease using the word “Redskins” in their coverage of the Washington NFL
franchise. Instead, they said they would refer to the team as simply “Washington.” The Daily News also banished the team’s “Chief Wahoo” logo from its
pages.
These moves tell me the FCC need not get involved in this particular content issue, although Chairman Wheeler is as free as anyone to voice his own personal views on the
controversy.
It’s pretty clear by now that the movement to get rid of the Redskins team name is taking on what you might call “free-market” momentum of its own – which
is to say, it hardly requires government intervention to encourage it.
Personally, I’ve never felt strongly either way about this team’s name. Maybe that’s because it’s
an out-of-town team that I just don’t think much about. Here in New York, the only experience we have with this kind of thing concerned the St. John’s University basketball team, which
changed its name from the Red Men to the Red Storm years ago, and the world survived.
It is only a matter of time until this Redskins name is sacked. The protests of owner Snyder and the
diehard fans who support the name’s continuation are only postponing the inevitable.
The fact is, the only “governing” body that should intervene in this issue is the
NFL itself. The league could put the whole thing to rest by “encouraging” Snyder to start the process of rebranding his team because, really, having a football team with the name
“Redskins” in this day and age is inappropriate, and everybody knows it.