About that SCOTUS ruling on indecency
April 29, 2009 2:31 pm ET by Eric Boehlert
It's the one from yesterday that upheld the FCC's Bush-era attempt to crack down on broadcasters who air even fleeting, live TV references to the F-word, and other banned utterances. The way Bono and Cher both dropped the F-bomb on award telecasts earlier in the decade.
If we take a step back, the 5-4 conservative ruling really is quite amazing when you consider that ten years ago the FCC had virtually walked away from the business of fining broadcasters for indecency. Today, thanks to a conservative pressure campaign to change the laws, the fines broadcasters face are staggering. And again, not just for lewd, R-rated morning show banter. But for airing live events where anybody (including athletes) curse and it's picked up by microphones.
That kind of stuff used to get a pass because the FCC had decided that in order for a on-air F-word to be actionable, it had to be used in a sexual manner. In fact, the FCC initially passed on fining the network that aired Bono's acceptance speech profanity ("really, really fucking brilliant") because the "language used by Bono did not describe, in context, sexual or excretory organs or activities and that the utterance was fleeting and isolated." That, according to the FCC's own indecency officer at the time
For years, the key guidelines the FCC used in determining indecency fines included whether the material described or depicted sexual or excretory organs or activities. And the broadcast in question had to be "patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium."
In other words, to be indecent the content had to sexually explicit, go on at length and used to titillate. But post-Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction, and after the Parents Television Council moved into high gear, the FCC announced that "given the core meaning of the 'F-word,' any use of that word or a variation, in any context, inherently has a sexual connotation" and therefore it was indecent.
And now, thanks to SCOTUS, that policy change has been upheld. Is the policy change constitutional? Does the FCC have the right to monitor speech on the airwaves? The SCOTUS passed on that this week, but may soon be asked to address the issue.
1. The Public Airwaves are a Public Resource, and are in no way shape or form owned in the least, by those who are licensed to use that Public Resource, the Public Airwaves.
2. The FCC is the direct overseer and custodian of the Public Airwaves, and performs that oversight as an agent for the Congress, and therefore as an agent of the American People, for whom Congress itself is simply an agent.
3. In enforcing the necessary regulations of the FCC, the FCC has few options to it, short of yanking the FCC License of a broadcaster who violates those regulations... fines are one of those options, and we hope fines work: and when they don't, and the broadcaster persists in violating FCC Regulations, then sure, yank their FCC License... because what the heck do they think, that they own the Public Airwaves? They do not! The Public Airwaves are a Public Resource.
4. It's strange that you'd side with Fox here... I don't.
I know (as I said above) that the Public Airwaves are a Public Resource, not owned in any way shape or form by rupert murdoch (or any other broadcaster), and I know again that the American People can have their agents in Congress and on the FCC regulate the use of that resource any way they like, and again I know that fines are simply a way to enforce Regulations, but that anything up to and including a revokation of an FCC License is just fine with me too.
So I guess in a knee-jerk reaction against 'conservatives' on the SCOTUS, and in the strange defense of hearing "F Bombs" broadcast on the Public Airwaves, you end up siding with rupert murdoch's Fox in this particular case?
Go figure... I certainly don't side with Fox... I have sense I say, and can see and reason through, the things I listed above.
George Carlin come back - we could really use you right now! And bring Lenny Bruce with you!
These five are throwing down the gauntlet. It's war time for them, and they're going to prove their points and their values.
Just wait until these same five SCOTUS justices vacate the Franken recount.