Content Wars - What's Happening

April 2012

FCC Appeals Super Bowl Indecency Decision to Supremes

The FCC filed an appeal to the Supreme Court on April 17 asking it to review the Second Circuit decision throwing out the FCC's $550,000 fine against CBS for the Janet Jackson Super Bowl halftime show reveal as arbitrary and capricious. But the FCC also asked the Court to hold the petition in abeyance until it had ruled on the commission's challenge of another indecency decision, the Second Circuit's ruling that its indecency finding against Fox (referred to as “Fox II”) for profanity on an awards show was also out of bounds. The Court is expected to weigh in on that challenge within the next couple of months. The FCC argues in its petition that the Third Circuit erred in finding its fleeting-images indecency policy was an "arbitrary and capricious" departure from precedent.

Free Press: Political Spots Would ‘Pollute’ Public Broadcasting

Noncommercial TV and radio stations, most of which have been hit hard in the pledge department by the down economy, now could rake in millions from political ads that a federal appeals court has freed them to accept. That is just what Free Press is afraid of. "Polluting public broadcasting with misleading and negative political ads is not in keeping with the original vision of noncommercial broadcasting," said Free Press President Craig Aaron. "And it's certainly not the solution to funding public media…. At a time when people are turning to public broadcasting to get away from the flood of nasty attack ads, viewers don't want to see Sesame Street being brought to them by shadowy Super PACs," he said. The Association of Public Television Stations said it was reviewing the opinion.

Ninth Circuit Rules Noncoms Can Accept Paid Issue and Political Ads

A federal appeals court has ruled that noncommercial broadcasters can accept paid issue and political ads, but not commercial, for-profit spots. The decision could give commercial broadcasters new competition for election ad dollars. The decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals came in a challenge to the FCC's noncom ad ban by Minority Television Project, owners of KMTP-TV in San Francisco, for airing paid promotional announcements. The station accepts no government money from CPB. "Applying intermediate scrutiny, we uphold the ban on the transmission of advertisements for goods and services by for-profit entities, but we strike down as unconstitutional the ban on public issue and political advertisements," said the court. The decision overturns a lower-court ruling that had upheld the ban on all three ad categories – political, issue, and commercial.

NBC News Admits Error in Edited 911 Call in Trayvon Martin Case

NBC News has completed its internal investigation into the editing of a 911 call in the Trayvon Martin case that appeared in a story from Ron Allen on “Today.” "During our investigation it became evident that there was an error made in the production process that we deeply regret," NBC News said in a statement. "We will be taking the necessary steps to prevent this from happening in the future and apologize to our viewers." The selective editing of the 911 call in the story gave the impression that George Zimmerman had racially profiled Martin on the night he killed the Florida teen, making it sound like he said Martin looked suspicious because he was black. The full audio shows that Zimmerman did not mention Martin's race until asked by the 911 operator.

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