Story by Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington
The Bush administration is seeking to challenge News Corporation’s Fox Network before the Supreme Court after it lost a landmark indecency case against the media company in June.Kevin Martin, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, confirmed on Wednesday that the Office of the Solicitor General would seek a review of the lower court decision, which found that the US media regulator had failed to provide a “reasoned explanation” for a “180-degree turn” on its treatment of “fleeting expletives” on broadcast television.
If the Supreme Court takes the case, it would represent the first high court review of broadcast speech since the 1970s.
The case centred on two airings of expletives during the broadcast of the Billboard Music Awards by Cher in 2002 and Nicole Richie that contained several references to the words “fuck” and “shit”.
In its ruling, the second circuit court of appeals found that the FCC’s policy on fleeting expletives was “arbitrary and capricious”, and that the regulator defied “common-sense understanding” of the words, which it said were often used in everyday conversation without any “sexual or excretory” meaning.
Mr Martin said he was “pleased” with the solicitor-general’s decision.
“I continue to support the commission’s efforts to protect families from indecent language on television and radio when children are likely to be in the audience,” he said.
At the time of the ruling in June, the FCC chairman said the lower court was “divorced from reality” in its conclusions that the words in question did not invoke a sexual connotation.
If the FCC was unable to restrict the use of the words fuck and shit during prime time, he added, “Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want”.
A spokesman for Fox said: “When the petition’s filed, we’ll respond in due course.”