Reply #59: the fcc changed the standard -- that was the problem

[onenote]

The FCC - and the courts - had consistently adhered to the position that a "fleeting" or "isolated" utterance of an "indecent" word would not subject a broadcaster to liability. There were numerous cases where those words were broadcast -- airings of the Who's song "Who are You" with the lyric "Who the fuck are you" for example; or where an announcer remarked that he had "fucked up" -- that were not found to create liability because they were not repeated and thus did not meet the requirement that they be uttered to achieve "verbal shock treatment".

After Bono of U2 referred to his winning a Golden Globe award as "fucking brilliant", the FCC reversed course and decided that even a single, fleeting, unscripted utterance of the word "fuck" would expose a broadcaster to liability. The FCC then proceeded to riddle its decision with subjective and imprecise exceptions -- for example, the repeated use of the word fuck in Saving Private Ryan was deemed okay as were use of the word during news programming. But a PBS documentary about blues musicians in which one of the musicians used the word fuck was deemed to create liability.

In other words, the FCC made a hash out of it and the court, fortunately, took the appropriate action.