Industry Analysis Report

Media censorship Industries.

The first of the three focused Industries is the FCC, which is the “federal
communication commission” in the USA as majority of the media viewed in western
society comes from USA and all programs must apply with the FCC codes, ethics
and practises. The second industry is “FreeTV Australia”. Australia’s federation and
responsibility for censorship is divided between the states and the federal
government. FreeTV represents all of the Australia’s commercial free to air TV and
they have to comply under the ethical laws and regulations that “FreeTV” code of
practice states. The third industry is “Google”, which censors its own sites. Unlike
viewership ethics Google questions the “search ethics” as adult orientated sites in
its database are easily available, where the same material would be banned on
“FreeTV Australia” and the “FCC”, yet Google will censor other material out that
isn’t pornography but information.

Overall the operation of the media censorship Industries and how they function and
regulate based on what are their ethics and policies are which will be focusing on
there websites. The function of how these industries work are all different which
will be analysed biased how the industries are private, federal, publicly owned and
income through sponsorship investments and advertisement.

The Federal communication commission (FCC)

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent United States
government agency. Washington Headquarters Building Federal Communications
Commission 445 12th Street SW Washington, DC 20554. FCC Chairman Julius
Genachowski . (Federal, C, C. 2009)

The Federal Radio Commission was established by the Radio Act of 1927. The
Communications Act of 1934 expanded the role of the FRC, increased membership
to seven commissioners and renamed the organization to the Federal
Communications Commission (Federal, C, C. 2009).

The FCC operates with five commissioners, one who serves as chair. Yet it has
been recently debated about who the FCC works for and it appears to not be the
American people as the FCC has had meetings with big companies such as Google
in the apparent discussion of “The best outcomes for the consumer at large”(C,
Wimbush 2007). The FCC met with over 100 companies and thus raises the
question that even federal owned companies have their price. The spectrum is a
public resource and cannot be privately owned “but bribed” (C, Wimbush 2007)
What the FCC provides in censorship is issue licences for radio and TV. Responded
to public complaints (Like FreeTV Australia) set policies, enforces laws, and sets
technology standards. The FCC collects Millions of dollars per incident. A good
example would be the $550 million fine against CBS for the Janet Jackson’s halftime
performance during the 2004 super bowl.

The FCC can only leave the public questioning how some programming is tainted by
not having equal ethical policies in place. The FCC monitor programming through
the complaints and indecent or obscene programming must be submitted to the
FCC and must be accompanied by a tape or transcript of the offensive
programming (Federal, C, C. 2009).

Free tv
“FreeTV Australia” is an industry which acts as an umbrella to all the commercially
free-to-air television shows and channels. These networks that are beneath this
umbrella are.

Network Ten Macquarie Southern Cross Media Web: wintv.com.au

Web: ten.com.au Web: southerncrossten.com.a
Seven Network u
Other
Web: au.tv.yahoo.com/tv Prime Television
Web: imparja.com
Web: primetv.com.au/i-
Nine Network Web: nbntv.com.au
cms.isp
Web: WIN television
channelnine.ninemsn.com.au

As Australia is a federation, and is responsible for censorship. FreeTV is an industry

body represents all the organisations of the channels and programs on Australian
TV but also represents the public voice such as complaints and those Australian
Television Ad’s about rating codes of practices.

FreeTV functions with a board of directors representing the major members groups
such as those listed. As television has become the main advertising medium the
board is supported by a number of committees which formulate advice and
recommendations in relation to policy and regulatory issues, engineering and
technical issues, marketing and other areas affecting the industry.
Yet as commercial TV is clearly sponsored by companies it is subjected to the one-
sided views. One third of the main media advertising revenue is on commercial
free TV (U/A 2009). Thus does a company those profits from the public airwave
have a responsibility to that same public. Programming classifications include
adverting time on television along with codes such as junk food advertising codes
Violence, sexual references, yet information standards have gone downhill (U/A
2009). The obligation the media has to there sponsor then public is much more
important.

Google
Google is not a censorship media industry yet they are a privately owned search
engine that does censor some sites from their databases. The founders are Larry
Page and Sergey Brin technically, it is a private corporation, main stock
investments are Sergey Brin, which owns 15.6 percent of Google's outstanding
shares, and Larry Page controls 15.7 percent. Google has roughly around
11thousand employees and head Googleplex, Mountain View, California, United
States.

The problem with Google censoring is that they are stated to provide the “ultimate
search engine” industry then why is it censored. Google is not public owned so it
has no obligation to the public as it is privately owned. Yet Google cannot claim to
be the “ultimate search engine” if in that case it is only provides us with “half
information”.

Great Firewall of China is an interesting view on how Google censors as an industry.

On February 14, 2006, protesters organized in a "mass breakup with Google"

whereby users agreed to boycott Google on Valentine's Day to show their
disapproval of the Google China policy (A, Mclaughlin 2006). The reason could be is
that Google makes money of the public in the sense that without the public,
advertising on Google it would be pointless, so doesn’t Google have some
obligation ethically to the public to provide them with uncensored information (isn’t
that what the internet is for?) On request a lot of companies and countries can
censor things on Google, and even some are thinking about doing what china has
done (Google Maps have been quite subjected to this).

Conclusion

The following Industries that censor the media do so under the responsibility for the
public, companies and sponsors. Yet the single use of a vulgar word specifically,
two four-letter words, one a sexual epithet, the other a bit of barnyard or toilet
slang are censored. Google censors websites and the internet, where the internet is
available for anyone to broadcast any information they wish. There are different
industries and there idea of what should be ethically and politically censored yet it
seems clear that these industries do have some obligation to what the public what’s
and does what censored as the public are the ones that provide them with the
rates. Along with Google the public is the one that provides Google with money for
every click on a website Google gets some money from the site, so doesn’t Google
have some obligation to the public as this is where there income comes from.

Reference
• Federal Communications Commission
Last reviewed/updated on September 23, 2009
http://www.fcc.gov
(Federal, C, C. 2009)

• ©2009 Google
http://www.google.com/intl/en/about.html
(Google ©2009)

• Google in China 1/27/2006 11:58:00 AM

Posted by Andrew McLaughlin, senior policy counsel
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/01/google-in-chinahtml

• © 2007-2008 toodoc.com
http://www.toodoc.com/FCC-ppt.html
(Toodoc. 2009)

• Chris Wimbush 2007, October 10th , Who Does The FCC Work For:
http://www.ipdi.org/blog/index.php/2007/10/10/who-does-the-fcc-work-for/
(C, Wimbush 2007)

• Google censors itself for China Last Updated: Wednesday, 25 January 2006,
08:45 Author Unavailable:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4645596.stm
(U/A 2006)
• 2008 No Author
http://www.freetv.com.au/
(U/A 2009