WDBJ-TV Fights FCC's Extraordinary $325K Fine

WDBJ-TV7 in Roanoke, VA has filed an appeal with the FCC that opposes the $325,000 proposed fine levied against the station for briefly showing a sexually explicit image during a 2012 newscast, report roanoke.com.

In a 55-page appeal, which includes an additional two pages of WDBJ’s recent news programming awards, Channel 7’s lawyers argued that the fine and the station’s liability in violating federal indecency rules “should be cancelled in their entirety.”

If the FCC concludes that a fine is still warranted, “the amount should be drastically lower than the $325,000 proposed,” the appeal said.

The station also claimed protection under the First Amendment and stated that the FCC did not follow its own standards regarding indecency rules. The biggest complaint was against the sheer size of the fine, which if upheld would be the largest financial forfeiture ever imposed by the FCC against a station for a single incident.

In its appeal, the station argued that “even if some penalty could properly be imposed, there was no justification for the FCC to impose a fine 46 times greater than its rules establish.”

The “fleeting inappropriate image” accompanied a July 12, 2012 story on Channel 7’s 6 p.m. newscast. The story reported that some officials were unhappy that a former pornographic movie actress had joined the Cave Spring Rescue Squad as a volunteer EMT.

During the broadcast, a video image from a pornographic website could be seen near the edge of TV screens. The image, which WDBJ said was visible for 2.7 seconds, showed male genitalia and a sexual act. In an earlier filing with the FCC, station management said that the video clip was not seen by news employees during the editing process because the station’s monitor screens were not wide enough to show the entire website. However, the offending clip was visible on any wide-screen TV or monitor. The station has taken steps to make sure such a mistake does not happen again, Marks said in the news release.

When it announced the proposed fine in March, the FCC released a statement that said: “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.”