For those titillated with hearing judges and high priced attorney’s use profanity in a live courtroom, you weren’t disappointed in the Fox Vs FCC profanity hearing Wednesday on C-SPAN.
The debate came down to the issue of what is news and what is entertainment. The FCC previously has stated that an expletive uttered in the course of a newscast is permissible, but took exception to Cher doing the same thing during Fox’s live broadcast of the Billoard Awards.
Broadcast & Cable in their report said “The FCC case appeared to take its biggest hits from the judges' questions about whether its policy, in which the same words uttered by the same people were indecent in one context (entertainment) and not in another (news), makes it difficult for broadcasters to determine what might get them in trouble.”
The central question the 3 panel of judges on the second court of appeal have to decide is if the Billboard Awards counts as news or as entertainment. If they rule it is justifiably news, the FCC decision to censure and fine FOX could be reversed.
The Fox legal argument was that the FCC was not consistent in its application of the use of profanity in entertainment, news or live events.
C-SPAN will re-broadcast the one hour hearing on Saturday at 7 PM EST.
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