Urban Unrest

21 May 2005 | Community | Ernesto Aguilar

KPFT does not allow the airing of profanity except between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m. Even with this allowance, a stricter standing policy than what the FCC requires, please consider the listeners; I’ve gotten complaints about late-night shows which have allegedly permitted profanity-laced dialogues, with seemingly no point than being able to do so. Please consider how this comes across to listeners.

You are required to self-report all instances of profanity aired outside of times allowed by station policy. A reporting form is posted in the control room. If you don’t report it, and a listener instead brings it to my attention, this will be factored in to any penalty assessed to your show. Because we’re in a license renewal period (and, even if we weren’t, we’re talking about fines for both the station and individual programmer), this is not negotiable, nor is it personal. In the event of a filed complaint, KPFT needs to be able to demonstrate when we take action against violations, because it potentially mitigates some of the fines we could face. Please make sure to self-report when a violation happens.

The law is now shifting where stations will be required to prove something DID NOT happen, versus a complainant proving that it did. We must be more careful about this.

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