Variety: Three Networks Challenge FCC "indecency" rulings (incl. Fox!)

[villager]

more post-election backlash against our poor, fascist friends? & Note the involvement of "Rupert's Boys!

Nets irked over indecency

Trio of webs challenge FCC

By WILLIAM TRIPLETT

WASHINGTON -- Fox came out swinging against the Federal Communications Commission last week, accusing the agency of embarking on a "radical reinterpretation and expansion of its authority." Network joined CBS and NBC in filing briefs in their federal court challenge of a package of indecency rulings issued in March by the FCC.

Fox said the agency and its attempt to clean up the airwaves "violates both the statute and principles of administrative law and...does serious violence to the First Amendment." Given Rupert Murdoch's well-known personal conservative values, it's ironic that Fox would choose to battle the very administration it favors. As it has before, the agency continued to frame the dispute as a struggle between Hollywood and decency. Collectively, the individual briefs are based on an amalgam of previously made arguments and some newly elaborated points.

All three nets noted that for decades, the FCC employed a policy of restraint on indecent content, which falls under constitutionally protected speech. In the late 1970s, the Supreme Court upheld the commission's authority to police airwaves -- but only under narrow, circumscribed terms. Among the more important terms was an exception for "fleeting" or "unscripted" instances of profanity. For a broadcast to be deemed indecent, the court said, expletives had to be deliberate and repeated.

But all three nets said the FCC had abandoned that approach in favor of a "zero-tolerance" policy that's "a direct repudiation of governing constitutional principles set forth by the Supreme Court," as CBS said in its brief. The broadcasts that are the subject of the challenged indecency rulings all involved fleeting, unscripted profanities in a live setting. According to the briefs, rather than explain its change of policy -- as required by law -- the FCC has denied any change of policy has occurred. "This latest evasion of its administrative law responsibility borders on the frivolous," Fox said.

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http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117954416.html?categoryid=18&cs=1

[drm604]

1. Maybe the networks are starting to understand exactly what they've been supporting.

We can hope.

[villager]

2. maybe they realize they no longer have to "play ball"

with the Li'l Emperor?