“This is really, really fucking brilliant-and really, really great,” Bono said as he accepted a 2003 Golden Globe for best original song. At first, broadcaster NBC Universal, Inc., got off scot-free for airing the F-word. The Federal Communications Commission’s Enforcement Bureau found that the expletive was fleeting and that, in context, was not indecent. But five months later, the FCC’s five commissioners, led by Michael Powell, overruled the bureau. Without issuing a fine-since this case was admittedly a deviation from precedent-the commission issued an order saying that NBC had violated the statutory prohibitions on indecency and profanity.
The March 2004 Bono ruling was the opening shot in what would become the FCC’s assault on television indecency. The commission has not ordered fines in all instances of profanity on broadcast television. (As many telecommunications lawyers note, Saving Private Ryan is a frequent feature on broadcast television.) Still, lawyers say that in the last five years the FCC has abandoned the restraint that had defined its indecency policy since the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case FCC v. Pacifica Foundation. Although the Supreme Court ruled then that the FCC could regulate broadcast indecency (specifically George Carlin’s “Filthy Words” routine), the commission remained very cautious in doling out penalties-until the Bono ruling. In 2003 the FCC issued three no-tices of liability, totaling $440,000. In 2004 it issued 12 notices of liability–demanding more than $3.5 million in indecency fines, according to FCC statistics.
