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Claim: The FCC has approved the use of the "f-word" on any TV show or radio program.
Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2003]
Origins: The item above is an "Action Alert" issued by the American Family Association (AFA), an organization headed by the
This issue arose as a result of the annual Golden Globe Awards ceremony held in January 2003<, during which singer Bono of the band U2 uttered the phrase "this is really, really, fucking brilliant" (also reported as "this is fucking great"). Bono's comment was aired, intact, by various television stations, prompting about 200 complaints to the FCC that those TV stations had violated the FCC's restrictions on obscene broadcasts by carrying that portion of the awards ceremony. Several months later, in October 2003, the FCC's Enforcement Bureau issued a response to those complaints in which it maintained that broadcasts of Bono's words had not violated the FCC's prohibition of indecent program content because the word "fucking" was a "fleeting and isolated" remark used "as an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation" and not "to describe or depict sexual and excretory organs and activities":
Indecency findings involve at least two fundamental determinations. First, the material alleged to be indecent must fall within the subject matter scope of our indecency definition — that is, the material must describe sexual or excretory organs or
The FCC doesn't maintain a blanket list of words whose use is absolutely forbidden (despite the impression left by comedian George Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words" routine") and assiduously monitor all public broadcasts for those words, punishing any outlets which air material containing them. The FCC only responds to "indecency" cases when it has received a sufficient number of complaints about a particular broadcast; they judge each case individually and issue rulings which take into account FCC guidelines, current standards and practices, as well as precedents set by previous rulings. Each case is an individual trial — something ruled indecent in one instance may be allowed in a different context, or vice-versa. Just as in the legal system, FCC rulings are interpretations of regulations — they set precedents that influence future decisions, but they don't create or re-write existing rules.
As a threshold matter, the material aired during the "Golden Globe Awards" program does not describe or depict sexual and excretory activities and organs. The word "fucking" may be crude and offensive, but, in the context presented here, did not describe sexual and excretory organs and activities. Rather, the performer used the word "fucking" as an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation. Indeed, in similar circumstances, we have found that offensive language used as an insult rather than as a description of sexual or excretory activity or organs is not within the scope of the Commission's prohibition of indecent program content. Moreover, we have previously found that fleeting and isolated remarks of this nature do not warrant Commission action. Thus, because the complained-of material does not fall within the scope of the Commission's indecency prohibition, we reject the claims that this program content is The AFA "Action Alert" implies that the 2003 Golden Globes ceremony marked the first incidence of anyone's using the The FCC staff who issued the October 2003 decision maintains that their statement does not represent a "relaxation" of their standards, but was a consistent application of existing rules which the Golden Globes controversy merely brought to widespread public attention. Others (such as the AFA) maintain that the FCC's statement represents an increasingly permissive standard regarding broadcast media usage of words traditionally labelled as "obscenities," and that their concerns cannot be dismissed out of hand as invalid — especially since one of the benchmarks used is "contemporary community standards." (That is, the more one hears certain language used on radio and television, the more it becomes part of "contemporary community standards" — is television and radio usage the chicken laying the egg which hatches "community standards," or is it the other way around?) As the issue currently stands, FCC Chairman Michael Powell is reportedly seeking to have the five-man FCC commissioners' panel enact a proposal barring the word "fuck" from most radio and broadcast television, regardless of context. Additional information:
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