Indecency on the Air
Free Speech and Foul Language on Television
Three years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court considered a lawsuit brought by Fox Television Stations and other broadcast networks challenging the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) prohibition on the transmission of indecent material over the air from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. (See “Broadcast Indecency,” Supreme Court Debates, December 2008.) In question was a 2004 FCC order stating that “isolated or fleeting use of obscenities violated the law.” Prior to that, the Commission’s policy was to only impose fines for repeated foul language, not just single instances of curse words. The FCC had applied this order to incidents that had taken…
