WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court would not be recommended as the best place in this city to hear a raucous conversation that makes full use of the F-word, the S-word and assorted other vulgarities.
Tuesday morning could be an exception, however. While the nation focuses its eyes and ears on the presidential election, the justices will spend time talking about the F-word and its many variants in a case that could determine whether these words will be heard more often on television and radio.
The nation’s broadcasters are fighting fines imposed by the Federal Communications Commission for airing the banned words, even if inadvertently. For example, when Cher won a Billboard Music Award in 2002, she accepted and said it proved her critics wrong. “People have been telling me I’m on the way out every year, right? So f—- ‘em,” she said. The program was broadcast live on Fox TV.
The stakes are high, for broadcasters, for viewers and for parents. At issue is the future indecency standard for television and radio. Will these broadcasts remain under strict federal regulation because a mass audience of children and families might be watching, or will a looser, free-speech standard give broadcasters as well as their audiences more choice in what they see and hear?
The broadcasters say the old rules are an unconstitutional infringement on free speech and that they are impractical in a world of cable and satellite TV. This year, about nine in 10 Americans receive TV signals from a cable or satellite, yet only the broadcast industry remains under the legal rules set when nearly all homes depended on the public airwaves for TV and radio.
“The court has not revisited this issue in 30 years, and we would like broadcasters to be treated the same as cable TV or the Internet,” Phillips said.
While cable channels are largely free of government oversight, the traditional over-the-air broadcasters are subject to strict regulation because of the use of the public airwaves.
The broadcasters say federal policing and the prospect of high fines for airing banned words poses an everyday threat. “I don’t want to say all live sporting events or all live broadcasts will come to a halt, but what happens if an expletive gets on the air? They (FCC) can impose a huge fine on the network and on all the local stations that broadcast it,” Phillips said.
But parents’ groups say children and families should be shielded from profanity and sex on television. And maintaining a standard of decency is a small price to pay for the use of the public airwaves, they say.
“They are using the public airwaves for free. We don’t think we should have to tolerate a race to the bottom to see who can go further,” said Timothy Winter, president of the Parents Television Council in Los Angeles. The group claims more than 1 million members, who in turn have launched a wave of complaints to the FCC to protest vulgarity and sex on TV.
Since the advent of national broadcasts on radio, it has been a federal crime to “utter any obscene, indecent or profane language” over the public airwaves. The FCC is authorized to enforce that law. At the same time, the First Amendment says Congress “shall make no law … abridging the freedom of the speech.”
During the 1960s, the court agreed that, despite the First Amendment, radio and TV broadcasts could be regulated because they made use of the public airwaves.
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