Posted on 12/19/2006 4:35:11 AM PST by theothercheek
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York granted a request from C-SPAN to televise oral arguments in a TV industry challenge to the FCC's ruling in March that Fox’s broadcast of the Billboard Awards, in which Cher and Nicole Richie uttered the profanities “f**k” and “sh**,” was indecent by contemporary community standards.
“No cable or broadcast news operation has yet asked C-SPAN for a pool feed of the December 20th arguments,” reports Broadcasting & Cable. “[L]ook for the cable news nets and perhaps even the broadcasters, all of the latter have a dog in the fight, to run with it as well.”
Maybe the community the FCC is thinking of is Mayberry, circa 1965. The Stiletto has heard mothers screaming these very words at their misbehaving children; fathers yelling them at motorists – along with profane hand gestures for added punctuation – heedless of the example they are setting for their children in the back seat; and children themselves, using them in casual conversation with the same frequency as “um.”
Someone should inform the FCC that community standards have already gone to heck in a hand-basket. The Stiletto applauds the FCC’s valiant, if anachronistic, attempts to stop contemporary society’s free fall into coarseness, incivility and vulgarity. But the agency needs to come up with a regulatory justification for its indecency rulings that fits the times and holds up in court.
NOTE: This is the third item in a feature called "The Daily Blade" and appears under an article titled "Global Warming Is Not A Crime Against Humanity" and another article titled "EU Holds Turkey At Arms’ Length In Accession Talks." The original source includes links to relevant articles and Web sites - including a photo of the set of Mayberry!
Society would be better off watching Mayberry shows than the garbage that's on today.
Whenever I watch that show, I always wish I could go back in time and live in a place just like it. Remember that Twilight Zone episode, "A Stop At Willoughby"? Mayberry is my Willoughby.
I grew up in The Bronx. Mayberry seemed idyllic.
My next door neighbor (Aunt Bea) tought me how to kill chickens. She would grab the chicken by the head, and whip the body around till it flew off, the head still in her hand. Down the road, the pig farmer would dispatch pigs with a 22. I saw all of it before I was 10.
You don't see those things on "Mayberry".
How idiotic. Just because we have some problems in society, we're supposed to just throw up our hands and let everything get tainted by it. Just ridiculous. Some people amaze me with their stupidity.
What, it's too hard to put a 7-second delay on a live entertainment show?
I'm in the middle on this issue. It would be silly to fine a news broadcast for profanity during a live feed (uttered by someone who doesn't work for the network -- a small punishment directed at the offending employee should be sufficient for profanity from the employee).
It would also be silly to have to tape-delay live events like football games, etc. -- if people participating in the events are profane, let the league handle it.
Other "live" events, controlled by or essentially for the TV (like awards shows, talk shows, parades, etc.), you can tape-delay them to cut out inappropriate stuff, and if the network DOESN'T they should bear the responsibility for their choice.
And the largest fines should be reserved for taped broadcasts of inappropriate things, where the network has made a conscious decision to do so. In those cases, there should be times that are reserved on broadcast for certain types of things (rather than a complete ban), kind of like the old "family hour" stuff.
What bothers me is when I'm watching a show with my children, a show that's completely appropriate to watch (like a football game), and then in the middle of that game the network puts totally INAPPROPRIATE stuff, either in commercials or in a halftime show, stuff that violates even their own "v-chip" rating, so that it's impossible for the parents to "make that choice" that we talk about.
Seriously, I didn't actually care about my kids seeing the Janet Jackson thing, the entire halftime show was stupid -- but I certainly had no way to PREVENT my children from seeing that if I didn't want them to, because I had no expectation that would happen.
What if someone uses the profanity during the oral arguments? Will the FCC fine a network if it live-broadcasts the proceedings?
Just got home from work and saw your typically thoughtful reply.
>What if someone uses the profanity during the oral arguments? Will the FCC fine a network if it live-broadcasts the proceedings?
I guess this is the $64K question. If it's "news" and not "entertainment" and the oral arguments occur when most kids are in school or asleep - not that they'd be watching C-SPAN, but may overhear the audio - it will be interesting to see if the FCC will let it slide. If FOX and the networks really want to test the FCC, their lawyers would endeavor to use the offending words as often as possible during their presentations.
A judge asked that very question, and used F*** to do it.
S**t, I was at work - or on my 1.5 hour commute home - and missed it! Gotta get TiVO one day. Do you think C-Span has a transcript?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.