UNIT 5 EXTERNAL GATEKEEPING
Censorship
Only motion pictures, and no other media, are legally subject to censorship (i.e. prior restraint) in the U.S. and in most countries that operate under her influence. Yet governments, including American governments, have from time to time attempted to commit censorship, sometimes out of genuine anxiety to protect the public. But the American courts in particular have always declared such attempts unconstitutional.
Regulation of Broadcasting
Radio and television stations have to be licensed by the government but a broadcast licence’s programme cannot be censored. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) charged with regulating radio, telephone, telegraph and television, can only interpret the law, it cannot make laws. It of course grants and renews licences and regulates some programme content in the arena of political affairs programming; for example the Fairness Doctrine, which obliges broadcasters to seek out and broadcast contrasting viewpoints on controversial issues of public importance, and the Equal Time clause of the constitution which requires that, during election campaigns, broadcasters should furnish equal time and equal opportunity to all political candidates for a given office. In addition, the Commission allocates frequencies to new broadcasting stations.
Nigeria’s National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) performs a similar role to the FCC’s. But while FCC deals basically with commercial broadcasting, NBC handles issues relating to federal, state and private (commercial) broadcasting. Moreover, the NBC is yet too young to have accumulated experience and material for analysis as the FCC has.
However, we are here primarily concerned with its gatekeeping role.
Regulation of Advertising
The U.S. Government regulates advertising through the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which was set up to check unfair competition in business, including dishonest advertising, especially dishonest television advertising directed at children. FTC does not censor the content of commercials, nor does it make rules on what may or may not be produced. It only detects and prosecutes instances of attempts to cheat consumers through dishonest advertisements. In principle, the relevant Nigerian government agencies will probably also find prior censorship or elaborate regulations unnecessary, since the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) has in fact embarked on an experimental internal censorship comparable in its ramifications to the internal censorship of motion pictures.
Criminal Liberal and Sedition
This is an area in which the state assumes the role of “prosecutor” in cases of false and malicious attacks on society, attempts to endanger public order by destructive (false and malicious) publications/information, and libellous statements against discrete social groups or against dead persons who cannot defend themselves. Even the United States has had on its books statutes pertinent to this area.
Examples include the “Alien Acts” and “Sedition Act” of 1798, which were designed to protect the young government of the new republic being destabilised by frivolous and malicious publications.
There were also the Espionage Acts of the first and Second World War periods, which were designed to prevent the otherwise irrepressible American press from publishing information that could be used by the enemy against the United States. However, it is a remarkable reflection of America’s commitment to press freedom and respect for constitutional rights that the Alien Acts and the Sedition Act of 1798 lapsed as soon as the young republic became more confident — actually when Thomas Jefferson, an untiring exponent of press freedom, became President. Similarly, the Espionage Acts expired at the end of each war.
But, even while these statutes remained on the books, relevant prosecution was extremely rare, no doubt because of the security implications but equally certainly because of the sensitive First Amendment issues raised by these statutes.
The latter observation is particularly relevant to the Disclosure Law of 1950 passed by the American Congress in the wake of the East-West Cold War. No news organisation was known to have been prosecuted under that law up to the mid-1980s (see Hiebert et al, 1988: 467), the only successfully prosecuted culprit till then being a government employee who was found guilty of selling classified photos to a British Defence magazine. American newspapers have of course been warned by the CIA that they could get into trouble by publishing information leaked to them in the course of such trials. In Nigeria, such laws appear to be in active operation still.
Restriction on Dissemination and Pornography
The final illustration we are going to discuss of external regulation, or attempts to regulate media content by governments concerns restrictions on the importation, distribution, and sale of pornographic materials — films, tapes/cassettes, comic strips, and what have you.
Governments everywhere appear to acknowledge their responsibility for the protection of public morals by restricting the importation, distribution and sale of pornography generally. Obscene publications are the primary targets of such restrictions, but in some countries, they also
relate to gambling and lottery information. Quite understandably, they also relate to “treasonous propaganda” in America of the cold war period. The Customs Departments of several governments are empowered to impound obscene materials as well as lottery gambling information that are being imported into their countries. The Postal Services have also been known to block the mailing of such information in the past but their activities in that regard have tended in recent times to be limited to getting senders of such information to label them as such.
What I personally find intriguing now is that national laws pertaining to pornography tend to focus attention on the importation of obscene materials across borders, while apparently de-emphasising the dangers of pornography originated within each society. Judging by the amount of mass-mediated home-grown obscenity within some of these societies, it would appear that the fear of cultural contamination more than concern for public morals must have been at the centre of the attempts by various governments to restrict importation, distribution and sale of pornographic materials within their borders.
Other Government Measures
Other areas in which governments have sought to act as “external gatekeepers” to the mass media include protection of the political and judicial systems (e.g. against contempt of court) restrictions on court coverage (to preserve security) and protection of property.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 5.1
Find out as much information as you can on the way pornography is controlled in your country.