BILLBOARD - APPEALS COURT OVERTURNS FCC'S NEW INDECENCY RULES

APPEALS COURT OVERTURNS FCC'S NEW INDECENCY RULES

A federal appeals court on Monday overturned the FCC's revised standards for determining indecency, when it ruled in favor of News Corp's Fox television network, which had been chastised by the commission for airing four-letter vulgarities during telecasts of the 2002 and 2003 Billboard Music Awards. Besides the incidents on Fox, the court also suggested that an expletive uttered by Bono during the NBC telecast of the 2002 Golden Globe Awards did not warrant FCC censure. The decision was immediately denounced by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, who used the FCC-banned expletives in a prepared statement. Martin said that he found it "hard to believe that the New York court would tell American families that s*** and f*** are fine to say on broadcast television during the hours when children are most likely to be in the audience." He said that if the commission is unable to restrict the use of such language, "Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want." But, writing for the majority, Judge Rosemary Pooler said that the FCC's policy regarding "fleeting expletives" departed from its past policy and that it had "failed to articulate a reasoned basis for this change in policy." She described the FCC changes as "arbitrary and capricious." Several legal analysts cited in various reports about the decision predicted that the matter would be appealed to the Supreme Court.

05/06/2007