WASHINGTON, D.C. (MCT) — The Supreme Court Tuesday seemed reluctant to end the government’s historic policing of the broadcast airwaves and to strike down the “indecency” rules that guide prime-time TV shows.
Broadcasters use the public airwaves, and the “government can insist on a certain modicum of decency,” said Justice Antonin Scalia during oral arguments on the constitutionality of a ban on four-letter words and nudity.
“All we are asking for is for a few channels” where parents can be confident their children will not hear profanity or see sex scenes, said Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who is a parent of two young children.
At issue before the high court was a plea from the broadcast industry urging the justices to strike down or sharply limit the government’s authority to police the airwaves. Since the 1930s, federal law has prohibited radio and TV broadcasters from putting on the airwaves material that is “obscene, indecent or profane.”
In the past decade, Bush administration appointees at the Federal Communications Commission launched a crackdown on indecency.