Court undresses FCC in Super Bowl suit

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It seems like only yesterday that I was sitting on my buddy’s couch during Super Bowl XXXVIII, elbow deep in a bowl of homemade salsa, when he jabbed me in the ribs and said “dude, did you just see that?”

The “that” in question was the now infamous “wardrobe malfunction” endured by pop star Janet Jackson during the halftime show.

She is going to be in so much trouble, said my friend.

As it turned out, CBS, the network which broadcast the game that year took the brunt of the blame as people across the nation immediately called for a crackdown on broadcast indecency.

But on July 21, the U.S. Appeals Court for the Third Circuit overturned a $550,000 fine against CBS imposed by the Federal Communications Commission for the 2004 incident viewed by an estimated 90 million viewers.

In it’s ruling, the court stated that the FCC’s decision to fine CBS for broadcasting Jackson’s semi-exposed breast for nine-sixteenths of a second was “arbitrary and capricious,” because it deviated from the agency’s longstanding policy of penalizing broadcasters for “indecent material so pervasive as to amount to ‘shock treatment’ for the audience.”

Bravo to the court for recognizing the snafu for what it was – an oversight and not a “willful action” as claimed by the FCC.

Anyone who has navigated a broadcast television lineup lately can trip over a bevy of imagery aimed at alienating and attracting viewers at the same time. Why single out an instance which I suspect most people did not even witness live.