Golly Gee: Court Strikes Down FCC’s Indecency Policy
In the latest example of how corporate attorneys and the judiciary system have way too much time on their hands, an appeals court today overturned the FCC’s decades-old censorship of “fleeting expletives” on broadcast TV. Your favorite stars now may [bleep] at will on-air, as long as it’s short.
Fox TV, NBC and others had complained that the FCC’s no-tolerance indecency enforcement was unfair and violated their First Amendment rights. The court found the FCC’s policies “unconstitutionally vague, creating a chilling effect that goes far beyond the fleeting expletives at issue here.” (Brr.) The Wall Street Journal describes the decision as a “major win” for broadcasters, which if true, makes one wonder how trivial a minor broadcast victory might be.
Should broadcasters go all out next time and challenge FCC censorship of full-blown, burns-the-hair-off-your-ears, soliloquy-length profanity? Why not? If you’re going to do a thing, never do it halfway. Besides, unemployment in the legal profession is at an all-time high, and maybe this’ll keep a few more tort-hunters off the street.
Alternately, the courts could examine “minor” issues like why broadcasters get all that underutilized spectrum for free, and in a related field, why cable franchises continue to enjoy de facto monopoly power to squeeze out competition, jack up rates and force consumers to purchase packages of services they don’t want just to access one channel they do. Then the rest of us would have less to swear about.
Related posts:
- AT&T’s Day in Court: What it Will Take to Win — or Defeat — The Merger U.S. Department of Justice moves to stop the AT&T/T-Mobile merger...
- Tech Policy PR: Is Curation the New Online Piracy? Curation — it’s huge, it’s hot. It has its tens...