<P> Then on June 15, 2006, President George W. Bush signed into law the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005 sponsored by then - Senator Sam Brownback (now Governor of Kansas), a former broadcaster himself, and endorsed by Congressman Fred Upton of Michigan who authored a similar bill in the United States House of Representatives . The new law stiffens the penalties for each violation of the Act . The Federal Communications Commission will be able to impose fines in the amount of $325,000 for each violation by each station that violates decency standards . The legislation raised the fine ten times over the previous maximum of $32,500 per violation . </P> <P> The FCC has established rules limiting the national share of media ownership of broadcast television or radio stations . It has also established cross-ownership rules limiting ownership of a newspaper and broadcast station in the same market, in order to ensure a diversity of viewpoints in each market and serve the needs of each local market . </P> <P> With the major demographic shifts occurring in the country in terms of the racial - ethnic composition of the population, the FCC has been criticized for ignoring the issue of decreasing racial - ethnic diversity of the media . This includes charges that the FCC has been watering down the limited affirmative action regulations it had on the books, including no longer requiring stations to make public their data on their minority staffing and hiring . In the second half of 2006, groups such as the National Hispanic Media Coalition, the National Latino Media Council, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the National Institute for Latino Policy, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and others held town hall meetings in California, New York and Texas on media diversity as its effects Latinos and minority communities . They documented widespread and deeply felt community concerns about the negative effects of media concentration and consolidation on racial - ethnic diversity in staffing and programming . At these Latino town hall meetings, the issue of the FCC's lax monitoring of obscene and pornographic material in Spanish - language radio and the lack of racial and national - origin diversity among Latino staff in Spanish - language television were other major themes . </P> <P> President Barack Obama appointed Mark Lloyd to the FCC in the newly created post of Associate General Counsel / Chief Diversity Officer . </P>

Why does the government regulate radio and television