NEW YORK, June 4 (Reuters) - In a major victory for TV networks, a U.S. appeals court on Monday overruled federal regulators who decided that expletives uttered on broadcast television violated decency standards.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, in a divided decision, said that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission was "arbitrary and capricious" in setting a new standard for defining indecency.
The court sent the matter back to the commission for further proceedings to clarify its indecency policy. The FCC, which said it was still studying the opinion, could decide to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the appeals court.
That's as far as I can go because the language gets pretty foul after that paragraph. I can hardly wait to see how TV networks are going to exercise their new-found freedoms.
3 comments:
Great.
Just great.
Unfortunately, the most basic profanity has become the norm...meaning the standards can now be set to include most basic profanity +. And most people watch cable. Cable can do almost anything so I imagine basic regular TV will have a hard time to compete unless they can talk the same way at some point.
The test is still what the community will tolerate and at this point I guess quite a lot...so it will be hard to ban most stuff after 9 p.m. in general.
I remember the first time I heard the "b" word on TV on "Dynasty" I think when I was 9...my mother was strict and spanked me for watching it. No language of any kind in our house ever.
Excellent remarks. What is most especially disturbing to me is to hear professing Christians endulge in even "light" profanity.
We will one day answer for every idle word. We've digressed so much...
Post a Comment