FCC to Consider Punishing Broadcasters that Use Term 'Redskins'

redskinsFCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said the commission is considering a petition filed by GW law professor John Banzhaf III urging it to take away the broadcasting license of WWXX-FM for referring to the Washington NFL team as the “Redskins.”

In August, Banzhaf shared with Broadcasting & Cable several options for having the term removed from broadcast, including a FCC petition to restrict words that are “highly derogatory, racist, and hateful to ethnic and other groups.”

“There are a lot of names and descriptions that were used over time that are inappropriate today,” Wheeler told reporters on Tuesday.

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