Feds Rebut Broadcasters

NEW YORK Federal regulators have dismissed broadcasters’ contentions that a strict new rule covering indecent language is unfair, saying the “fleeting reference” policy passes Constitutional muster.

In its argument filed in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, the FCC said Fox’s broadcasts of the 2002 and 2003 Billboard Music Awards were indecent.

“This court should uphold the commission’s reasonable assessment that contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, however loosely viewed, simply do no permit entertainers gratuitously to utter the ‘F-word’ and the ‘S-word’ in awards shows broadcast on national television at a time when substantial numbers of children are certain to be in the viewing audience,” the FCC wrote.

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