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FCC Says TV Obscenity Is Okay if Used as an ‘Adjective’ 10/9/2003 Bono gets away with swearing on live TV during the ‘family hour.’ Using the F-word on prime-time television is apparently okay so long as it is used as an “adjective” and not a verb, according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
On October 3, the FCC dismissed indecency complaints against 91 NBC affiliates about the musician Bono’s use of the F-word during the January 19, 2003, Golden Globe Awards, which ran during the 8 to 9 p.m. “family hour.”
During that live broadcast, Bono referred to something as being “f***ing brilliant” or “f***ing great.” The network did not bleep that exclamation.
David Solomon, chief of the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau, said the utterance was not a violation of the indecency law:
An “invitation to begin using the F-word.”
“This is a stark departure from previous FCC policy, which properly viewed the F-word as obscene in and of itself regardless of context,” said Robert Knight, director of CWA’s Culture & Family Institute (CFI). “The culture wreckers at NBC and other networks who like to ‘push the envelope’ will see this as an invitation to begin using the F-word as an ‘adjective.’ The Bush administration should act quickly to countermand this ruling, and Congress should institute hearings into the FCC’s utter inability to enforce decency provisions on the airwaves.”
“This decision lets the networks know that they can use the ‘F’ word as long as the context is not referring to a sex act,” Lara Mahaney, director of corporate and cntertainment affairs for the Parents Television Council (PTC), told CFI. “The ruling doesn’t surprise us since the FCC is a toothless lion and since indecency is not a priority of Chairman Powell.”
“For whatever its reasons, the FCC is reluctant to dampen live and spontaneous comment, debate or discussion on a ‘serious’ subject (e.g., contemporary music),” Robert Peters, president of Morality in Media, told the Culture & Family Institute. “Calculated, gratuitous, and recorded vulgarity is presumably a different matter.”
Prime-time vulgarity soaring, report says
The FCC should have no problem finding calculated, gratuitous and recorded vulgarity, according to a recent PTC report. The review, “TV Trash Talk Abounds,” reveals a staggering increase in prime-time vulgarity over the last five years.
Reviewing the first two weeks of the November sweeps in 1998, 2000 and 2002, the report notes a 98.4 percent increase in vulgarity during the 8 p.m. family hour, and a 109.1 percent increase during the 9 p.m. hour. In many instances, lead characters are the ones using the vulgar language.
“The fact that popular television characters are frequently using such coarse language has an impact on the children who are watching,” said PTC President Brent Bozell. “The entertainment industry has a responsibility to reduce this flood of vulgarity, and the FCC needs to get serious about enforcing broadcast decency laws and punishing broadcasters with fines and license revocations that violate those laws.”
Peters added that the decision also continues the FCC’s long-standing practice of allowing any and everything on television without any indecency enforcement.
“The FCC’s failure to fine broadcast TV network affiliate stations for airing network programming that is indecent is both inexplicable and inexcusable,” Peters said. “It is inexplicable because the FCC has never publicly justified the refusal. It is inexcusable, because daytime and prime-time broadcast TV is filled with offensive and gratuitous sex and vulgarity.”
Meanwhile, Mahaney added that the ruling would not be passed over.
“We will be filing an appeal today and we will be pursuing congressional hearings as to why the FCC is not doing its job regarding indecency,” Mahaney said.
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