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Community => Politics and Government => Topic started by: CaseAgainstFaith on January 10, 2012, 09:25:36 am
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The Supreme Court is considering whether government regulators may still police the airwaves for curse words and other coarse content at a time when so many Americans have unregulated cable television, and the Internet is awash in easily accessible adult material.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in a First Amendment case that pits the Obama administration against the nation's television networks. The material at issue includes the isolated use of expletives as well as fines against broadcasters who showed a woman's nude buttocks on a 2003 episode of ABC's "NYPD Blue."
The broadcasters want the court to overturn a 1978 decision that upheld the Federal Communications Commission's authority to regulate both radio and television content, at least during the hours when children are likely to be watching or listening. That period includes the prime-time hours before 10 p.m.
At the very least, the networks say the FCC's current policy is too hard to figure out, penalizing the use of particular curse words on awards programming but not in the airing of the movie "Saving Private Ryan," for example.
The administration said that even with the explosion of entertainment options, broadcast programming remains dominant. It also needs to be kept as a dependable "safe haven" of milder programming, the administration said.
Nearly nine out of 10 households subscribe to cable or satellite television and viewers can switch between broadcast and other channels by pushing a button on their remote controls. "People have really lost track of which stations are broadcast stations," said Paul Smith, a partner with the Jenner and Block law firm who has argued First Amendment cases at the Supreme Court.
But supporter of regulation said the media companies that own television networks also have movie studios, cable channels and other outlets where they are free to run whatever they wish.
Even on television, the rules only apply between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., noted Tim Winter, president of the pro-regulation Parents Television Council. "Radio and television broadcasters already have the ability to be as indecent as they want after 10 p.m."
The FCC policy under attack flowed from the 1978 Pacifica decision, which upheld the FCC's reprimand of a New York radio station for airing a George Carlin monologue containing a 12-minute string of expletives in the middle of the afternoon.
For many years, the FCC did not take action against broadcasters for one-time uses of curse words. But, following several awards shows with cursing celebrities in 2002 and 2003, the FCC toughened its longstanding policy after it concluded that a one-free-expletive rule did not make sense in the context of keeping the airwaves free of indecency when children are likely to be watching television.
source - http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57355848/supreme-court-weighs-policing-curse-words-on-tv/ (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57355848/supreme-court-weighs-policing-curse-words-on-tv/)
I understand the time when this was needed, back when there was only 1 or 2 radio stations (tv didn't exist at the formation of this policing) the need for policing the radio. But in this day and age when you at least have 12 local channels and if you have cable/satellite upwards of 500, should you find something indecent it isn't nearly as hard as to just turning the channel. I say down with the policing of radio and TV stations.
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I would only support this in one small instance, this policing beat Fox up and made them either start being honest or kill the network
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I don't know. I know I was kept incredibly innocent until I was quite old because all we had was broadcast TV. I didn't even know you could have sex or swear on television until I accidentally came across True Blood while browsing through the cable channels when I was sixteen. If they got rid of certain restrictions, then the argument of "well, just make sure your children only watch these things" goes out the window, because everything would be allowed to contain adult content. My mom, who did supervise what we watched, would never have let me graduate from PBS to Numb3rs if the show hadn't been in that slot.
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Glad our tax dollars are going to something useful. Why use them to fix the economy when we have people saying, "Fuck!" on national TV? It's not like people use that language out in the streets.
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I don't feel it's the place of the FCC to enforce such regulation, especially since they've only limited it to swear words and nudity while allowing incredibly graphic violence. Each station, broadcast or otherwise, has the right to air the content they want, including restricting nudity, swearing, violence, etc, and I know there will be stations that restrict such content.
Swear words are just that, words. It doesn't matter if you say "We are so fucked" or "We are so humped", as they both mean the same thing. Kids hear such words off of television as well, either from hearing conversations a the mall, the playground, the bus, or the classroom (even assuming their parents and siblings aren't using them at home).
As for nudity, well, part of the reason the US has such a hangup on it is because we're so prudish that it's held to a high taboo. Which, interestingly and understandably, leads to exploitive near nudity for adverts because our society has made it into a forbidden fruit.
For those that feel we should maintain enforced restriction, I ask this. Give a solid reason for the benefit of keeping swear words and nudity off the air that is not rooted in religion or personal preference.
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Oh this is gonna be a good fight.
Ironbite-if the policing is struck down, we might just have ourselves a country.
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So how does the legislation cover, for example, people who live in the Central time zone who are able to receive TV broadcasts from transmitters in EST. Do they get an illicit hour of naughtiness between 9pm and 10pm?
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I don't feel it's the place of the FCC to enforce such regulation, especially since they've only limited it to swear words and nudity while allowing incredibly graphic violence. Each station, broadcast or otherwise, has the right to air the content they want, including restricting nudity, swearing, violence, etc, and I know there will be stations that restrict such content.
Yeah, that's always struck me as kinda hypocritical.
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Seeing as the California law was struck down I'm guessing 7-2 in favor of weakening the FCC
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I have a rather amusing mental image of the Supreme Court releasing a profanity-laden statement restricting the FCC.
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The government and the FCC really shouldn't be policing media like that. TV stations know what will and won't fly with their viewers. They can police themselves.
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If this is struck down, I think there should be a campaign to remind people that their TVs have a V-chip. Help out people that feel the need to police the content they receive.
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If this is struck down, I think there should be a campaign to remind people that their TVs have a V-chip. Help out people that feel the need to police the content they receive.
So? How the fuck do you use it?
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If this is struck down, I think there should be a campaign to remind people that their TVs have a V-chip. Help out people that feel the need to police the content they receive.
So? How the fuck do you use it?
Thank you for demonstrating the utility of such a campaign. Though how you use it depends on the model of TV, you can usually find it under “Parental Controls†of the TV’s setup menu.
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Just about every device you can hook up to a TV nowadays has it's own parental controls anyway, So the V-chip thing isn't even that necessary.
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I have a question for everyone who believes that the FCC should not be policing the broadcasts.
Can we all agree that there is content that is inappropriate for children to watch / listen to?
To me the argument for deregulation feels a little bit too much like, "well he is doing it so why cant I?". I feel that if someone purchases access to a different network they would have the right to police their own viewing, including what their children are exposed to. However I feel that any state affiliated network should remain policed. (to be honest I don't know much about all the different American broadcasters, but in South Africa we have a state broadcaster and a few independent ones.) Now I should also mention that with this policing though that they should not be hypocritical about it. As the example showed, they had to exclude swearwords from awards programming, but could show saving private Ryan. I feel the standards should be strictly formulated, including looking at violence, and implemented.
I just feel there should be an enforced standard that is considered acceptable for children on state broadcasting. With that said though, I also feel that the standards should be regularly re-assessed to move with the times. Languages change, as do attitudes towards what is acceptable and unacceptable.
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If parents don't want their kids to see something on TV, that's their responsibility, not the TV channel's. No one is forcing kids to watch "inappropriate content" (a very vague term, by the way, because inappropriate means different things to different people). If you don't like what you're watching, or if a parent doesn't like what their kids are watching, they can turn the TV off. If it happens enough that the station starts losing revenue because they're losing viewership, then a smart exec will change that around.
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Just as I see it. Its not an issue of what's decent or indecent, its a matter of who should be policing what children see: the government, or their parents. Personally, I think that if a parent doesn't like their kids watching something, they should set up a house rule that it shouldn't be watched. Its their fucking jobs, if they're either unwilling or unable to do it, then fucking tough titty.
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I have a question for everyone who believes that the FCC should not be policing the broadcasts.
Can we all agree that there is content that is inappropriate for children to watch / listen to?
To me the argument for deregulation feels a little bit too much like, "well he is doing it so why cant I?". I feel that if someone purchases access to a different network they would have the right to police their own viewing, including what their children are exposed to. However I feel that any state affiliated network should remain policed. (to be honest I don't know much about all the different American broadcasters, but in South Africa we have a state broadcaster and a few independent ones.) Now I should also mention that with this policing though that they should not be hypocritical about it. As the example showed, they had to exclude swearwords from awards programming, but could show saving private Ryan. I feel the standards should be strictly formulated, including looking at violence, and implemented.
I just feel there should be an enforced standard that is considered acceptable for children on state broadcasting. With that said though, I also feel that the standards should be regularly re-assessed to move with the times. Languages change, as do attitudes towards what is acceptable and unacceptable.
I see your point, and I largely agree. I just have one point of contention, and one point of how broadcasting is in the US.
Point of Contention: What is or isn't appropriate for children to see largely depends on the child in question and their parents. I agree that the younger a child is the less able they are to properly handle violence and sexual themes, but there is no hard and fast rule on what those ages are. I also feel it should be up to the parents to decide which programming is acceptable for their children to watch, and to not feel like the television is an acceptable baby-sitter. I mean, they've even made television programs that seems to be specifically for infants (just look up "Boohbah" on Google to see such an example, though I actually find it quite creepy).
Point on US Broadcasting: The US doesn't really have state broadcasting. The publicly available broadcasting stations, whether they require a fee or no, get their finances from corporations that pay to have their advertisements aired. The only real difference between broadcast television, which has no fee to view, and cable/satellite television, which does have a fee to view (sometimes content specific), is that broadcast television must maintain their own broadcasting towers, while cable/satellite television goes through a content provider who selects which channels they wish to provide.
Now, if there was state broadcasting I would say it is fully within the right of the FCC to regulate what content the state can air. I just don't feel it's the business of the FCC to regulate what private companies can air (aside from content that would otherwise be against the law) on the sole basis of personal morality or because they feel they know better than parents what children should watch during normal children's waking hours.
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Just about every device you can hook up to a TV nowadays has it's own parental controls anyway, So the V-chip thing isn't even that necessary.
I am under the impression that there is still a lot of ignorance on the availability of such controls, though. The fact that such controls are so prevalent means that they are not a selling point, and therefore, almost never advertised. So a lot of people purchase the product, never really read the manual, and never realize that the controls are there.
However I feel that any state affiliated network should remain policed. (to be honest I don't know much about all the different American broadcasters, but in South Africa we have a state broadcaster and a few independent ones.)
The US has no state broadcast. The very nearest we have is public broadcasting, which does receive limited government funding, but is mostly supported through private contributions.
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I have a rather amusing mental image of the Supreme Court releasing a profanity-laden statement restricting the FCC.
Have an Onion. (http://www.theonion.com/articles/supreme-court-upholds-freedom-of-speech-in-obsceni,17372/)