A panel of the 2dd circuit court of appeals has ruled that the FCC’s indecency rules, calling the vague and a violation of 1st amendment rights:
In a sharp rebuke of the Bush-era crackdown on foul language on broadcast television and radio, a federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down the government’s near-zero-tolerance indecency policy as a violation of the 1st Amendment protection of free speech.
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The case was triggered by unscripted expletives uttered by Bono, Cher and Nicole Richie on awards shows earlier in the decade, and the court’s decision calls into question the FCC’s regulation of foul language and other indecent content on the public airwaves.
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A three-judge panel of the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals did not have the power to strike down the 1978 Supreme Court decision that affirmed the FCC’s right to police the airwaves for objectionable content. But it reversed the aggressive stance the agency took starting in 2004 that found even a slip of the tongue that got by network censors was a violation subject to fines for the stations that aired it.
The court said that policy on so-called fleeting expletives was “unconstitutionally vague” and created a “chilling effect” on the programming that broadcasters chose to air. The court echoed complaints from network executives that the FCC’s standards were nearly impossible to gauge, noting that the agency allowed the airing of the f-word and s-word in broadcasts of the World War II movie “Saving Private Ryan” but not in the PBS miniseries “The Blues.”
Word up.
Now a special master has to be appointed, because when stations appeal fines, because there is always the implicit threat that the FCC will “lose” license renewal applications when the fines are appealed.