TV obscenity: Are FCC rules unconstitutional?

“Should broadcasters be able to air whatever the &#%@ they want?” asked Amy Schatz in The Wall Street Journal. That’s the question at the heart of a decade-long legal battle between America’s TV networks and the Federal Communications Commission, which finally reached the Supreme Court last week. The FCC’s “indecency cops” say their rules protect children from seeing obscenity and explicit sexual images on public airwaves between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. But the broadcasters argue that the regulations violate free speech, and are so inconsistent that it’s impossible to figure out what is acceptable. NBC, for example, was censured after U2 singer Bono dropped an F-bomb during a live broadcast of the Golden Globes in 2003, but ABC was permitted to air soldiers’ profanities in Saving Private Ryan on artistic grounds.

The Supreme Court should side with the FCC, said Christopher Caldwell in the Financial Times. With hundreds of cable channels pumping sex and profanity into the nation’s living rooms, it’s vital to have one area of the media “sheltered from the tawdriness of mainstream American culture.” Without FCC rules, the TV networks would rush to compete with cable, filling our screens with “boobs, bums, and bullets.” I hate to break this to you, said Jacob Sullum in the New York Post, but young people already are exposed to all of that. The FCC’s guidelines date back to 1978, but today, 90 percent of homes get cable. And young people watch TV—as well as movies and videos—on smartphones, on the Internet, and on DVRs. “They don’t know or care what ‘broadcast TV’ is.” And yet the major networks still face substantial fines for fleeting images or words that are now commonplace. It’s time to abolish this unconstitutional and “weirdly selective censorship.”

How about modifying the rules, rather than taking away the FCC’s police badge altogether? said The Washington Post in an editorial. The broadcast networks still have enormous audiences, and the public expects them to observe some standard of decency. But the agency’s existing standards are “indisputably confusing” and need revision. The FCC should retain the power to fine “deliberate and consistent scofflaws.” But it should stop making a federal case if an excited celebrity says “f---” when he gets an award, or if Janet Jackson accidentally flashes a breast.

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