Media & Communications Law
Whipped Cream and Money: Fox Fights FCC Indecency Fine
Posted Mar 24, 2008, 02:37 pm CDT
By Martha Neil
In the latest signpost pointing toward a potential loosening-up of federal restrictions on broadcast content, the Fox Television network is fighting a $91,000 FCC indecency fine over a 2003 reality program featuring strippers and whipped cream that contestants licked off of digitally obscured body parts.
The Federal Communications Commission decision to impose the fine was "arbitrary and capricious, inconsistent with precedent, and patently unconstitutional," Fox contends in a press release about its decision to appeal the penalty. Since the fine wasn't particularly large, by network standards, and especially in the wake of a recent U.S. Supreme Court agreement to hear, for the first time in 30 years, a court challenge to indecency rules, the move suggests that broadcasters may see a more lenient regime looming, reports the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.).
As discussed in an earlier ABAJournal.com post, the Supreme Court agreed last week to grant certiorari in a case over the airing so-called fleeting expletives.
Unlike the Supreme Court challenge, however, "Fox's decision Monday to fight the FCC's latest fine didn't involve dirty words, but when and how it's appropriate to show scantily clad women engaged in sexual activities," the WSJ notes.
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