Supreme Court to Hear FCC Appeal on Profanity

The Superme Court is scheduled to hear an FCC appeal of a earlier decision about the use of “fleeting profanities” on broadcast television today according to USA Today.

The case stems from a live broadcast of the Billboard Music Awards on Fox when Cher used a four letter explative.   Under new rules from the FCC, Fox Network Stations who broadcast the word were fined.  Fox took the FCC to court over the issue.

Last year, a U.S. Appeals Court ruled in favor of Fox declaring  the FCC policy arbitrary and said the agency failed to justify its departure from a relatively relaxed earlier policy on the one-time use of expletives on TV.

The appeal to the Supreme Court begins today and is one of the closest watched cases on the current docket for the highest court in the United States. The consequences for viewers could be significant. Fox, NBC and other broadcasters say the FCC policy has interfered with their free-speech rights and caused widespread self-censorship.

Fox lawyer Carter Phillips said the prospect of fines under the new policy could discourage network airing of live entertainment and sports broadcasts.

The potential for self-censorship is backed up by a “friend of the court” brief from the California Broadcasters Association and 10 other such groups that say, “On pain of fines of $325,000 per incident, radio and television stations across the nation are now forced by the FCC’s fleeting-expletives policy to engage in expensive monitoring and policing of live broadcasts.”

Government attorneys countered that the FCC should be able to staunch the foul language on TV and that FCC decisions factor in the context of potentially offensive remarks. Backed by groups such as the Parents Television Council (PTC) and Morality in Media, the FCC stresses that broadcast TV is uniquely available to children, compared with cable, and should be protected from racy fare.

“All the FCC has done in this case is to insist that Fox not broadcast four-letter vulgarities on prime-time television to an audience it knew would include large numbers of children,” Robert Sparks told the court for PTC.