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Supreme Court to Hear FCC Indecency Case

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the arbitrary-standards dept.

MachineShedFred writes "The Supreme Court of the United States has announced that it will be hearing the FCC's appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision that the FCC has changed its policy on fleeting expletives without adequate explanation. It's now on the FCC to explain to the Supreme Court why its policy has changed. This is also the first time the Supreme Court has heard a major 'broadcast indecency' case in 30 years."

16 of 453 comments (clear)

  1. In other news by gnick · · Score: 5, Insightful
    FTA:

    Solicitor General Paul Clement ... argued that the decision "places the commission in an untenable position," powerless to stop the airing of expletives even when children are watching. Airing violent murders when children are watching? Still OK.
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    1. Re:In other news by gnick · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What, your TV doesn't have a v-chip? Actually it doesn't... But, I do have a superior system in place - Administrative controls. My kids are allowed to watch what I tell them they're allowed to watch. They have no televisions in their rooms and they'll have to get significantly more tech-savvy if they want to defeat the logging on my DVR. There's nothing technologically stopping from watching anything coming in, but we'd certainly have a chat about it if it was something objectionable.

      Technology obviated the need for "decency timeslots" a long time ago...if only parents would use it. I'd say that an obligation to parent responsibly should have superseded the need for "decency timeslots" from square one. Just my opinion...
      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
    2. Re:In other news by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Definitely. Such administrative controls can also be used to get children to 1) do their homework, 2) do their chores (aka "assigned tasks"), 3) eat their vegetables, and/or 4) go outside and get some fresh air before the TV can even be turned on.

      It's called parenting. When I was growing up, there were no technological controls available. We didn't have TVs in our bedrooms, and we were only allowed to watch what we were told we were allowed to watch. You watch something else and you were going to get yourself into trouble.

      The bottom line is that if you need technology to control what you're kids are watching -- you are doing something wrong.

      --
      My blog
    3. Re:In other news by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      an obvious examples examples being frontal nudity or other explicit pornography. Nudity and pornography aren't the same thing. Exposing a child to an unclothed human body isn't likely to be psychologically damaging at all really. Pornography is the depiction of sexual acts. Nudity displayed in a non-sexual context is absolutely fine for children to see. The problem with American society is that it seems to be unable to distinguish between the two.
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    4. Re:In other news by uniquename72 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ...every person has an abolute right to not be even "incidentally exposed" to some things,or have their child exposed to it, an obvious examples examples being frontal nudity or other explicit pornography. I agree -- we should ban the internet!!

      incidental exposure can be irreparably damaging I hear people say this, yet 100% of people I've asked saw porn as children and didn't turn into serial killers. Could you cite a source that isn't funded by any religious group? I find it much more likely that kids who are traumatized by such things are harmed more by their parents' serious over-reaction than by the porn itself -- Janet Jackson's breast comes to mind (as an example of the "frontal nudity" that you're so worried about).

      Funny how the world is full of 2-year-olds who see tits all the time, yet show those same tits to an 8-year-old and suddenly they've been scarred for life.
    5. Re:In other news by The+Spoonman · · Score: 5, Informative

      incidental exposure can be irreparably damaging, depending on what the exposure is to.

      There are very few things that are irreparably damaging, and they all require a lot more exposure than "incidental". Catching a half-second shot of a breast is not going to turn a child into a serial killer or even make them mildly anti-social. At BEST, it'll generate some giggles on the school yard the following morning and be forgotten moments later. While home from school, I was one of the "fortunate" few who caught the Bud Dwyer incident, live on the air. It was freaky, but didn't even bring about a nightmare.

      But, beyond that, in Europe, one can expect to find hard core pornography on broadcast television, and yet it's only the US where you find the highest incidence of serial killers and sociopaths. I would attribute that to the ridiculous, puritanical, half-assed armchair psychology from people like you who believe such stupid statements like the one italicized above.

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    6. Re:In other news by hedwards · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I have to strongly and completely disagree with one thing you said - incidental exposure can be irreparably damaging, depending on what the exposure is to. Not so much words, but every person has an abolute right to not be even "incidentally exposed" to some things,or have their child exposed to it, an obvious examples examples being frontal nudity or other explicit pornography. Great idea, but the most damaging programs on TV aren't "incidental" there designed specifically to be desired by the depraved.

      Most reality programming for example is deliberately set up to exploit the participants as the producers torture the participants for ratings.

      Dramas that portray the criminal justice system through fictional stories. In pretty much all the cases I know of they use deliberately unrealistic portrayals of both the pretty much everything involved in order to make it catchy to the sort of people that thoroughly enjoy schadenfreude.

      Reality programs which cover real crimes or real accidents.

      Realistically if you're going to try and suggest that "incidental exposure" is harmful you're going to have to demonstrate that it is more harmful than the slew of demeaning, degrading, perverse shows that the FCC thinks are A-OK for viewing.

      And I find it hard to believe that a couple of seconds of breasts on TV or a few expletives that slip through are going to cause more harm than the other programing which is already on the air.

      Really the only way for parents to deal with this is either to sit in the same room and monitor the programming, cut off anything but approved DVDs or just remove the TV and internet completely from places that kids can access.
  2. Where does it stop? by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How blatantly arbitrary and unfair. Why is the FCC flipping out over "fck" on the radio after this went unpunished!

    On a related note( possibly straying offtopic) this was a big issue in L.A. and elsewhere across the US with Spanish-language radio stations that were getting away with their equivalent of uncensored Howard Stern. How will the FCC go after them? What about Korean radio curses? When does it end? Hopefully the FCC will be so swamped with complaints that they'll be unable to investigate them all, and then they'll quit being our mommy and focus their efforts towards the future of spectral management.

    1. Re:Where does it stop? by Walpurgiss · · Score: 5, Informative

      It went more or less unpunished because South Park is on a cable TV network, not broadcast TV. The 6am - 10pm decency rules don't apply to cable or satellite television broadcasts.

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7301244.stm

      This bbc story about it mentions this information.

    2. Re:Where does it stop? by Umuri · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah.... Let's go with that belief.

      Because obviously someone uses a profane word because they lack the eloquence to call someone a bumbling ignorant uncultured swine of a simpleton. And obviously when someone wishes to damn someones soul to eternally burn in the fires of hell, they must say so in such verbage, instead of just simplifying it to "damn you" with the rest understood.

      Obviously people use profane words because they lack the vocabulary to use others words, and NOT because certain words have three key features:

      1. understood nearly universally within the culture
      2. carry a weight to them, especially when said very sparsly
      3. convey the point they are intended with little room for misunderstanding

      True one could be complex with their insults and verbose with their exclamations, but that would truly render them useless.
      What good is it to call someone a hedonistic glutton if they don't understand what you're saying?
      You would feel good you've insulted someone who can't understand what you're saying, and that is a worthless act. At least if you call them a lazy fatass they understand that they need to get up and move, in your opinion.

      I would argue that a well placed fuck or damn is more important than a good vocabulary. More so when you reserve your usage of them, as people notice when someone who rarely does so, curses.

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    3. Re:Where does it stop? by Hatta · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why do you get to define what sort of language is permissible and what kind isn't? I would argue that censorship is vandalism of language, as quite often there's nothing as expressive as a well used profanity.

      There is no objective measure of what language is lower or higher than another. It's all just words.

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    4. Re:Where does it stop? by Hatta · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As Lenny Bruce said, "If they can take away your right to say 'fuck', they can take away your right to say 'fuck the government'". And that's a message that deserves to be broadcast.

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  3. Crazy society by HungSoLow · · Score: 5, Funny

    In some cases you can watch people fuck, but you can't say fuck. Others you can see someone get fucked up, but can't say fuck. I mean seriously, what the fuck?

  4. The FCC is destructive by JonC88 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm a DJ for a very large college radio station (broadcasting all over the Boston metropolitan area in the middle of FM dial) and the most disconcerting facet of the post-wardrobe malfunction FCC crackdowns is the fact that even a single incident would result in my station being shut down. We got one complaint a few years ago (in the more tolerant era), so now, if we were to become a repeat offender, the fine--several hundred thousand dollars--would completely bankrupt the station. SInce we're independently funded through ad revenue, there's no way we could pay, and we'd be off the air--just if somebody complained to the FCC because a late-night DJ slipped up and said "Fuck" on air, even when we're actually allowed to play music containing the same word.

    To me, at least, it seems incredibly obvious that the punishments are beyond the limits of sanity. The FCC is trying to look out for the standards of our community? Yes, my station plays underground rock and hip-hop at night (I DJ for those programs), but during the day, it's exclusively jazz and classical. If, at 3am, a hip-hop DJ curses, leading to a complaint and the end of the station, who really loses? I suspect that the thousands of classical and jazz listeners would be more on the losing end than the asshole who called in the complaint or any of the other people who happened to hear the word "Fuck" in the middle of the night.

    The FCC is just one manifestation of how colossally fucked up governmental regulation is becoming. I'm all for the government trying to help out the people, but not when there's clearly no understanding of how the real world actually operates.

  5. I'm more worried... by SCHecklerX · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...about 'g' rated evangelism on TV. Truly. What the fuck? If ANYTHING requires parental guidance, it's that religious brainwashing being brought to your 5 year old on public television. That crap should be what is being forced into different timeslots and censored. Certainly not given a "TV-G" rating! Christ!

  6. Need to replace the FCC by Thaelon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What we first need to do is change the FCC so that it's not headed by appointed officials, but rather by elected representatives.

    The FCC's power has grown far beyond it's original intention (regulating airwaves frequencies in the U.S.). Apparently they only do things in response to complaints. Or at least that's how it once was. But the really fucked up thing is 99% of complaints come from one organization.

    So essentially this one single organization is responsible for most of the - detrimental in my opinion - changes to what is allowed to be broadcast or not.

    It's not the popular decision. People just think it is because this one fucked up organization has such broad powers and people just assume that it's the popular opinion. It is not.

    The organization responsible for all this? The Parent's Television Council. The sick thing is they're proud to be the nation's most influential advocacy organization yet have barely a million members. That's right one million uptight fucks are responsible for 99.8-99.9% of all FCC regulation that affects 303 million people.

    And the FCC allows it.

    To other countries: The US is not up tight! Most of us love a good nipple on TV. It's this one organization that has been acting via the screwed up joke that is our FCC that has watered down our TV, not popular opinion.

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