Supreme Court case tests FCC’s power to police TV indecency [View all]

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...the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Tuesday about whether the FCC should still have a role in policing the nation’s airwaves or whether its indecency regulations violate guarantees of free speech and due process.

The networks have argued successfully in lower courts that in a revolutionized world in which they exist “side by side” with cable channels that are beyond the FCC’s regulation, singling them out is not only nonsensical but unconstitutional.

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The Obama administration is defending the FCC’s powers. If anything, it told the court, the new media world requires continued federal oversight of the public airwaves to provide a haven for parents and children from the anything-goes world of cable and the Internet.

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The “uniquely pervasive” language in Fox’s brief comes from the Supreme Court’s 1978 decision in FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, in which it...found that the FCC was within constitutional boundaries to police the radio and television airwaves during the times children would probably be listening, which was interpreted as meaning between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

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With the right to the public airwaves, (Parents Television Council president Tim) Winter said, come responsibilities.

“If they want to be indecent, as we’ve said in the past, they can wait until 10 o’clock and be as indecent as they want,” Winter said.

full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-case-tests-fccs-power-to-police-tv-indecency/2012/01/03/gIQANAEujP_singlePage.html

The article also quoted Winter: "I’m a lifelong Democrat; I haven’t checked a Republican box on a presidential ballot since 1984." Former FCC officials now with the American Bar Association, in an amicus brief filed with SCOTUS, wrote: "The commission’s complaints policy has become so artificial that it naturally prompts the question, why does the Commission not simply turn the monitoring function over to the Parents Television Council?" (in reference to PTC's mass-complaint campaigns)

Other background info: in the FCC v. Fox case in 2009, the Sup Ct upheld the FCC's rights to regulate (in terms of administrative law) but deferred to lower courts in regard to constitutionality. The following year, the 2nd circuit court of appeals ruled that the policy had 1st amendment issues. The programming of concern included:
- the 2002 Billboard Music Awards (Fox), where Cher said "fuck 'em" to her critics,
- and the 2003 Billboard Music Awards (Fox), where Nicole Richie said in reference to her reality show "The Simple Life": "Have you ever tried to get cow shit out of a Prada purse? It's not so fucking simple." In both years, the network failed to mute the bad words out of the live broadcast in the Eastern and Central time zones but later edited the show for the tape-delayed Mountain and westward broadcasts.
- the NYPD Blue episode "Nude Awakening" (2003 on ABC) that showed a woman's naked buttocks for 7 seconds. That show aired at 10PM in the Eastern and Pacific time zones (thus exempt from the FCC decency timeslot) but an hour earlier in other time zones.