Today, the Supreme Court ruled that FOX and ABC are not subject to the fines imposed on it from the FCC due to the fact that the networks were not given enough advance notice that failure to censor ‘fleeting’ expletives and brief rear nudity would lead not just to censure, but also steep fines. These fines were brought against the networks for the uncensored use of the ‘F’ word from Cher, Bono and Nicole Richie during an awards ceremony and a 7 second scene showing the bare buttocks of a woman and the side of her breast during a 2003 episode of NYPD Blue.
Before these instances, the FCC had acted more as an advisory committee that existed to oversee and caution networks about violations and not to crack the whip and start fining them over infractions without warning; it was for that reason that the Supreme Court overturned the fines, not because they believed the FCC has no business censoring the airwaves. Currently, the FCC insists that all broadcast media shown on public airwaves (Fox, ABC, NBC, etc, cable and satellite are exempt) must be considered family friendly (TV-14 and below, basically) between the hours of 6 AM and 10 PM. Before these fines, the FCC allowed, but frowned upon, the ‘fleeting’ i.e. brief and rare use of certain swear words so long as they weren’t prevalent in a show’s broadcast or referred to an actual physical act (South Park parodied this brilliantly in ‘It Hits the Fan’). The FCC abruptly changed their tune in 2004 and started, without alerting anyone, fining networks for infractions that once just received warnings, and it was to this the Supreme Court objected to, not the fines itself. The Supreme Court deliberately avoided the First Ammendment issue here and issued an extremely narrow ruling that will most likey be revisited in the near future.
Ok, having read all that, you may be asking ‘Why do I care?’ Well keep this in mind, anytime the government takes more control and more freedoms away from one person, group or interest, what is to stop them from reaching farther and taking away more? Sure, TV may seem like a small deal right now, and while we can all agree that we don’t want children exposed to smut or illicit programming on TV, whose responsibility should it be to tell children what is right and wrong and what should be watched on tv, their parents or an unelected group of officials in the FCC?
Growing up, my parents put a lock on tv to block out anything over a PG-13 rating, and only they and I had the code to override that lock. Why can’t we do that today? Every tv you buy comes with a v-chip, and the average parent today were the same kids programming THEIR parents’ VCR, so they really can’t complain they don’t get the technology.
Another argument that stands out is that the ‘bad words’ many of us learned as kids we shouldn’t say have found their way more into the mainstream and are becoming acceptable, or if not that, at least more commonplace. Also, I’m sure any of us who has spent more than 5 minutes playing Call of Duty online have heard enough profanity from 10 year olds that would make even a sailor blush — profanity they obviously didn’t pick up from tv.
Free speech is one of the most precious things guaranteed to all of us in our Constitution, and it’s sad that our top court decided not to uphold its value, but merely base their decision on a technicality.