Putting the "F" in FCC

Who do you root for in a case where everyone's motives are misguided at best and disingenuous at worst?

A federal appeals court in New York has ruled that the FCC overstepped it's authority when it fined the FOX network for airing "fleeting expletives" during separate broadcasts of the Billboard Music Awards. The specifics of the case can be found at all the major news sites. What it boils down to is that the FCC got reprimanded for changing it's policy regarding flying-f*&^s without providing adequate justification for doing so.

Let's just assume for a second that any of the seven people who actually watch the Billboard Music Awards on FOX was actually offended. The odds that the thin-skinned viewer actually wrote the FCC? ZERO. Our friendly special interest groups, who believe their taste and judgement trumps everyone else's, employ individuals whose sole job it is to sit and watch TV all day looking for something they can label "offensive". They then jump on these instances and, through the virtue of their mailing list, convince a lot of people who never actually saw the "offensive" moment to complain to the FCC, thus creating a media firestorm which helps them with their primary goal, which is getting their names in the paper. Oh yeah, and there's also that meaningless fine that doesn't really change anything, but that's just icing. The Simpsons did a great parody of this situation in it's recently broadcast 400th episode, using Ned Flanders, of course, as the watchdog viewer.

Based on that premise the court's decision should be considered good news right? Well, not really, and that's because the issue isn't as much about free speech as the networks and studios would like us to think. It's about them being able to use shock-value to generate publicity and viewers when they need to. If you're gonna fine CBS for letting Janet Jackson's breast slip, then you also have to fine CBS News and all the other outlets who aired it ad-nauseum for the following three weeks.

So, when most of the players involved are little more than publicity craving [deleted fleeting expletive]s, the court's ruling feels less like a win for those of us in favor of personal responsibility and more like yet another opportunity for the media whores to turn some tricks.

Unfortunately, in this decorum-less age where we're blistered with f-bombs while simply walking through the mall, live television will always run the risk of a fleeting-expletive here or there. If they really wanted to change the landscape, the networks would pass the cost of their fines along to the actual offenders. If the Bonos, Janet Jacksons, and Nicole Ritchies of the world were stuck with a bill for displaying their lack of tact, then maybe others might pick up a copy of Emily Post now and then.

Post-script: The New York Times take on this was interesting. Apparently, the court based some of their decision on the fact that President Bush and VP Cheney aren't afraid to let the expletives fly in public:

If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts.

But the judges said vulgar words are just as often used out of frustration or excitement, and not to convey any broader obscene meaning. “In recent times even the top leaders of our government have used variants of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would believe referenced sexual or excretory organs or activities.”

Adopting an argument made by lawyers for NBC, the judges then cited examples in which Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had used the same language that would be penalized under the policy. Mr. Bush was caught on videotape last July using a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable in a conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Three years ago, Mr. Cheney was widely reported to have muttered an angry obscene version of “get lost” to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the United States Senate.