John Eggerton of BC writes that: the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court Thursday to review a lower court's decision that the Federal Communications Commission failed to justify punishing broadcasters for on-air swearing, saying that, as it stands, broadcasters have a pass to swear at will, and the FCC's ability to regulate indecency at all is at stake... The Fox case involved Fox's 2002 and 2003 airings of the Billboard Music Awards, which included airing the words "shit" and fucking" from Nicole Richie and Cher. The FCC found the words indecent as aired. Fox appealed, and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the FCC's decision was arbitrary and capricious and the commission had not sufficiently defended what was a change in policy on so-called fleeting expletives. In a stinging rebuke, the Second Circuit ruled that the FCC had not produced "any evidence that suggests that a fleeting expletive is harmful." The appeals court also had problems with the FCC's argument that the words always had a sexual connotation.It also was not persuaded by the FCC's declaration that it was regulating fleeting expletives out of concern for the public's exposure to the language on the airwaves, since the commission did not prohibit them in every circumstance -- for example, in reporting in a news story about the oral arguments in which the language was used in court. Link: Justice Department Asks Supreme Court to Review FCC Profanity Decision - Broadcasting & Cable.
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