Court's FCC slap-down proof agency has no clothes

July 22, 2008 The late comedian always appreciated how ironic it was that his diatribe on the arbitrary nature of censorship, "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision affirming the FCC's authority to determine exactly what people can't say on broadcast TV. After last year's major decision overturning fines for one-time expletives, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal ruled Monday that the commission and chair Kevin Martin "acted arbitrarily and capriciously" in fining CBS stations $550,000 for airing Janet Jackson's right breast for nine-sixteenths of a second during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. Absent proof that CBS knew what was coming from Jackson and accomplice Justin Timberlake, the FCC's legal argument, in essence, was that the broadcasters should have anticipated that something like this might happen and taken extraordinary precautions to prevent it.

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