E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSWhile no decisions was made on healthcare and immigration, the Supreme Court ruled that the FCC's indecency policy is too vague. NBC's Pete Williams reports.
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Federal Communications Commission failed to give two television networks, FOX and ABC, advance notice of standards before punishing them for broadcasts in which outbursts of expletives and brief nudity were aired.
“The Commission failed to give Fox or ABC fair notice prior to the broadcasts in question that fleeting expletives and momentary nudity could be found actionably indecent,” said Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the unanimous court.
The ruling does not affect the FCC’s policy banning indecency in TV broadcasting.
The court said that it did need not to address the First Amendment implications of the FCC’s indecency policy nor did it need to reconsider its prior indecency ruling in a 1978 decision regarding prolonged recitation of vulgar words.
The case arose out of three broadcasts on Fox and ABC in 2002 and 2003.
Two of the broadcasts on Fox involved the use of expletives during prime-time TV airings of the Billboard Music Awards. In one of those Fox broadcasts, “a person named Nicole Richie” used two common vulgar words while presenting an award: “Have you ever tried to get cow [expletive] out of a Prada purse? It’s not so [expletive] simple.”
The other broadcast, a prime-time airing on ABC of the program "NYPD Blue" involved what the FCC called “pandering, titillating and shocking” scenes of a woman’s naked buttocks being viewed by a child, which the FCC said put TV viewers, including children, in a “voyeuristic position.”
At issue was whether the FCC rules violated the First Amendment right to broadcasting freedom and whether the rules were too vague for the broadcasters to know what was prohibited and what wasn’t.
The court said Thursday that the FCC was “free to modify its current indecency policy in light of its determination of the public interest and applicable legal requirements” -- which means that further litigation in such cases is almost certain.
The FCC decision was the highlight of four decisions announced by the court Thursday. The justices’ decisions on the landmark health care overhaul and the tough Arizona anti-illegal immigration are likely to come next week.
Leave a Comment:
Get rid of the TV and watch the obesity problem go away.
It's stupid that this country is so backwards when it comes to things like sex and nudity. Welcome to the United States of Arabia.
If god wanted us to be nude, we would have been born without any clothes on!!!
This ought to piss off the soccer moms. Score one for the good guys.
10 years to get this decision, that's absurd!!! In the last 10 years, there have been a multitude of instances in which television has crossed the line of decency. We cannot rely on our Supremely Slow Court to rule on these matters. Five year olds that saw this in 2002 are now 15yr olds and hopefully the parents didn't waste the last 10yrs waiting for this ruling. Parenting begins at home. Get rid of the TV sets if you can't monitor your children. What about the internet? So much violence, sex, and nudity that goes unchecked by any agency. What type of policing or decency checking do we have in place for the WORLD WIDE WEB??? A far more dangerous tool than the outdated television set. The internet is at everyone's fingertips now with wireless networking and smartphone/tablet usage. Scary, but real.
The thing I can't understand is that we have no problem with people being shot, stabbed, strangled, dismembered and boiled down in acid baths on our TV, but say the F word or show someone's buttocks and the FCC comes out of the woodwork! I mean I like shows like CSI and Criminal Minds, but do you really think that is more appropriate for a child to see than a woman's buttocks or hear someone say sh!t (a word that 99.999999% of the populace uses daily)? No wonder violence is up in our country. We teach that violence is OK but nudity and use of "certain" words is bad. Push violence and repress the natural urges of people.....that should produce a healthy society (*rolls eyes).
I could not possibly agree more: violence in the most horrible forms is just fine, but protect the poor children from a naked but!?
And you can show all the breast you want....just not a nipple. That little nickel sized piece of brown flesh can incite a riot!!
Actually, interestingly enough, you CAN show sexuality on TV. As long as it's rape. Ultra-violence, rape and child molestation get put on TV all the time in law-enforcement dramas or Lifetime-esque movies. However, nudity and bad words are evil. How is it that we allow violence, especially in it's most perverted forms, but not nudity (which IS harmless)? I honestly believe it has nothing to do with any sort of conservative/christian background, I honestly believe it's a grand social experiment. While other developed countries are completely fine with normal nudity and healthy sex lives, we are subjected to violence and an artificial stigma over sexuality. I believe this is intentional to see the effects, or perhaps the effects were already recorded and they liked the results. After all, all these people who are so against nudity and bad words sure are proud of their children who ship off to go kill people.
The Teapublicans must be ecstatic.
The Teavangelicals must be beside themselves.
WORD!!!
Keep your day job. Your comedy isn't funny.....
which church group runs the FCC?
Why do we get all butthurt over cursing, words are words.
But isn't that what most of you posters here on newsvine demand from the govt? You want them to take care of you...this is just another way of doing that. You guys want the nanny state, why are you bitchin' when they do what nanny's do?
BABABABABABOOOOEY ! @!$%# THE FCC !
This is just wrong in so many ways
We are the only country touchy about nudity. We're also the country that celebrates blowing heads off, arms being ripped off, torture, mangling, anger and general destruction as a way of life. I wonder why our kids are so violent? Make love, not war.
There, obviously, has to be some regulations and enforcement body in place for TV. Everyone knows that "sex sells" and advertisers will use this to its upmost. That's their business. However, who will watch the watchdogs. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Being a 'baby boomer' I can remember what absolute sanitized TV was like but we didn't know the difference. Times change, moral values change, perceptions change, expectations change. There still has to be a voice of reason.
Why must their be regulations on my morality? Why should my standard be yours? Why am I not allowed to decide what is right and what is wrong? I am a baby boomer too, and I remember Lucy and Ricky never had sexual intercourse and yet there was little Ricky. So what. that was then and this is now. I would rather watch a couple making love then all the war pictures, however I do not advocate for taking war pictures off of TV simply because I find them gross.
I can go to the beach on any given day and see more naked butt than I will ever see on TV, as can my child. I really don't know what the big deal is.
Oooooh.....the "children" saw a "womans buttocks", eh?
If this is so wrong, then I guess we'd better equip the Birthing Rooms in our Hospitals with tiny little blindfolds - So the newborns eyes can be shielded from 'pandering, titilating, voyeristic' views of their mommas buttocks!
I mean, could lead to an outbreak of Oediphilia!
I wish the FCC would pay more attention to local TV stations - they are SO much more guilty of this kind of thing, yet every single time I report it, it is completely ignored. In my opinion, the FCC is just another government agency that is bought off by those with deep pockets. And I, for one, do not want to see or hear this kind of stuff. I don't have cable. I am not paying to be advertised to or cussed at or to get me sexually aroused. I just can't understand why people act in this manner - it may be cool to do it when you are 14, but everybody should grow up eventually. Broadcasting vulgar language and nudity of any kind over public airwaves should be forced upon all networks and they should have the decency to follow the rules. This is one area of society where other countries do a much better job at demanding morally acceptable broadcasting. I don't care if you want to see or hear this kind of thing, but there are alot of people who don't. There are plenty of outlets for people to participate in vulgarity and sexual issues, but as long as you don't infringe on my rights not to see it, I won't infringe on your rights to do so. This country just keeps getting worse and worse every day.....and you can start with public figures - I can think of 2 female public figures who could care less about morality and go out of their way to publicly show it.
Other countries? Really? You obviously haven't been to other countries. The only other countries that demand your clearly defined "morally acceptable" broadcasting would be located in the Middle East.
Interesting that in the US there are so many people who hate Muslims, and those are the same people who wish to be more like them by having the government dictate and legislate our morality.
OK, this has nothing to do with the story, but what is wrong with your editors?
"While no decisions was made on healthcare and immigration???" [insert expletive here]
I know you're in a hurry to post the news, but this is silly. As a college English teacher, I struggle with getting my students to even notice errors like this. What a great example set for them by our country's press.
And about the story: I agree with those who say that if people don't want to see nudity or profanity, just change the channel. What right do people who are picky about that stuff have to dictate what other people choose to watch? Or how about this: try not watching TV if it bothers you that much. Try reading a book. Then you'll be less likely to use singular verbs with plural nouns.
As the late, great George Carlin said, "You can prick your finger; just don't finger your prick!" BTW, I thought Nichole spelled her last name R-i-c-c-i?
Wrong Ricci. You're thinking Christina. They are talking about Lionel Richie's kid.
The problem here is the fact that some jackass is drawing laws around what they personally see as "indecent." This is regulation of personal values and is unconstitutional.
Get a grip folks, they Court didn't throw out the FCC's indecency rules, they simply said they needed to be more specific and clear. The Indecency rules are still in effect.
The reason TVs come with remote controls is so that you can change the channel if you don't like what's on. It's not the governments job to decide what we get to watch and what we don't. Nor is it 'soccer mom's' job to make that decision for me. I have nothing but disgust for the FCC an organization that seems not to care whether or not our News networks are fair and free of corporate ownership but is very concerned with whether I'm 'adequately prepared' to hear a swear word. Talk about shirking responsibility.
It still astounds me how fundamentally subservient and cowardly this country can be. I expect to wake up one day and see everyone wearing those submissive sexual outfits, with a government official's, or a rich corporate executive's name tattooed to their asses. I can fully understand that media that is broadcast through the air is regulated. But how in ****ing hell do you justify regulating cable, which you must have a residence at which to install, and you must pay for on a monthly basis? Are kids doing this? Are they buying houses and installing cable to see "indecent" programming?
Let me think of some other random sh*t that makes absolutely no sense.
I'm told I have to wear my seatbelt, even though I can't possibly hurt anyone or infringe on their rights by not doing so.
A person with whom I enter into an employment contract can legally tell me that I have to submit to random searches of my bladder for evidence of what I do on my own time, without probable cause.
The extremely wealthy say that if we raise taxes them, it's "class warfare", and they get away with this and other ridiculous propaganda because they've made a mockery out of controlling media companies from becoming too large and monopolized, (and because the republicans' crusade against education has been very effective.)
The police can shoot spikes into you and electrocute you if you refuse to sign a traffic ticket.
Corporations can essentially write bills and submit them to Congress, (where they are often sponsored and passed by republicans.)
A corporation is a "person", and giving huge amounts of money to a candidate is "political speech".
I'm sure if I had all day I could think of a thousand things.
The FCC was created to monitor and administer the frequencies that TV and Radio are aired on. Now though they have become the NAZI's of they air waves. Policing the air waves for vulgar language and nudity. They were never meant to police the content just the frequencies. The FCC has too much power and is violating our countries first amendment rights. The FCC should be disbanded and brought back to there original purpose to police the frequencies and not the content. Contact you Senators and Rep. and tell them to disband the FCC. The FCC has too much power and they must go away!!!!!!!
If only parents took responsibility for their own kids and didn't buy them TV for the kid's own room. Or that XBox, where the kid can play gory, violent games all day long when he's put on a 'time-out.'
I know people with 3 and 6 year old boys. Both have their own tv in their room. The mom was annoyed when she realized her 3 yr old was watching tv in his room past bed time. What did she expect? Oh and yet, mom and dad also have tv in their room. And in the living room. Gah.
A ruling upholding free speech in America? What the hell is this country coming to?
WTF????