The Federal Communications Commission ruled yesterday that the license renewal hearing involving a Dodge City, Kansas radio station, KTTL-FM, will not include consideration of the station’s anti-Jewish and anti-Black broadcasts in 1982 and 1983.
The FCC ruling was immediately assailed by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, whose director, Nathan Perlmutter, said the FCC’s decision “strains credulity. By any standard of public interest, of democratic fairness, of plain common sense, KTTL does not merit a broadcast license.”
The FCC ruling was a formal order, and reiterated the Commission’s April 26 action that broadcasts such as those aired on KTTL-FM fall within the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. The next step will include a hearing before an administrative law judge.
The hearing, for which no date has yet been set, will include a review of the operations of the station, including review of log books, financial records, and the character of the licensees, Charlie and Nellie Babbs.
A petition against renewal on grounds of the program’s content had been denied by the FCC. Another group, calling themselves Community Service Broadcasting, has petitioned for the station’s license, saying that the present holders are unfit under FCC rules to hold the license.
BACKGROUND OF THE CONTROVERSY
KTTL-FM was the subject of controversy after widespread reports that it was broadcasting racist programming, primarily sermons and speeches supplied by right wing extremist groups, notably the Posse Comitatus, a small anti-tax group. In Latin, Posse Comitatus means “power to the county.”
An example of the messages broadcast on KTTL-FM in 1983 is as follows: “You better start making dossiers, names, addresses, phone numbers, car license numbers, on every damn Jew rabbi in this land and every Anti-Defamation League leader or JDL leader in this land, and you better start doing it now. And know where he is …. You get these roadblock locations, where you can set up ambushes, and get it all working now.”
Perlmutter said broadcasts by KTTL-FM urging listeners to attack Jews and others “must be grounds for refusing to renew a station’s license to broadcast.” He added that the FCC’s decision yesterday was “a detour around the FCC’s legal obligation to serve the public interest.”
According to ADL civil rights division director Justin Finger, KTTL-FM has ceased broadcasting its racist programs. Finger noted that the FCC said last April that since the remarks in the broadcasts did not incite violence, the programs were protected under the First Amendment.
According to the commission’s ruling last April, the FCC is barred from “censoring broadcast material or interferring with the licensee’s discretion in selecting and broadcasting programming.” The Commission said it would not punish licensees for airing the programs in question “unless, speech no matter how abhorrent, creates a clear and present danger of serious evil that rises far above the public inconvenience, annoyance or unrest” or unless the programs were broadcast in violation of the Communications Act or its regulations.
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