Can You Say That on TV? Broadcasters Aren’t Sure

Imagine a world where it would be OK to use particularly foul language in an e-mail sent from your smartphone, but where you would be fined if you uttered the same words during a phone call. That is in essence the world that television and radio broadcasters continue to occupy today, after the Supreme Court unanimously refused to wade into the dispute over whether the First Amendment should apply to 21st-century communications in the same, compartmentalized way that the court commanded in the 20th.

In that world, cable programmers can say and display just about anything they want and not run afoul of the Federal Communications Commission’s indecency standards, because the FCC does not regulate cable television. Television broadcasters, however — ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, MyNetwork, Univision and a passel of independent channels — are bound by rules under which curse words or nudity, however fleeting, can subject them to penalties. Broadcasters have little real grasp of what is allowed and what is not. Similarly, the public has no idea what to expect; the next time Cher appears on a live awards show, should adult viewers cover the ears of their 8-year-olds, or can they depend on the broadcasters to censor indecent content?