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Over exposure fine gets over-ruled! CBS wont’ pay for Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction
By Amy Wood
Monday, July 21, 2008
The FCC said pay up - $550, 000. But the courts overruled the FCC on that fine, saying CBS doesn’t have to pay a dime, for the suprise appearance of Janet Jackson’s breast during the Superbowl half time show in 2004.
An estimated 90 million people watching the Super Bowl heard Justin Timberlake sing, “Gonna have you naked by the end of this song,” as he reached for Jackson’s bustier.
The court said the FCC deviated from its nearly 30-year practice of fining indecent broadcast programming only when it was so “pervasive as to amount to ‘shock treatment’ for the audience.”
Duke University law professor Stuart M. Benjamin, a telecommunications law expert, called the decision “a slap in face for the FCC.”
FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin said he was “surprised by today’s decision and disappointed for families and parents.”
“I continue to believe that this incident was inappropriate, and this only highlights the importance of the Supreme Court’s consideration of our indecency rules this fall,” Martin said.
Lurking behind the case, Benjamin said, is a “really big First Amendment issue: Is there really any difference between broadcast and cable, Internet, books, et cetera?”
“If we apply the same First Amendment scrutiny to broadcast as we do to other forms of communication, all these broadcast indecency rules are almost certainly unconstitutional,” he said.
“This is an important win for the entire broadcasting industry because it recognizes that there are rare instances, particularly during live programming, when it may not be possible to block unfortunate fleeting material, despite best efforts,” the CBS network said.
The $550,000 fine represented the maximum $27,500 levied against each of the network’s 20 owned-and-operated stations.
CBS v. FCC:http://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/063575p.pdf” title=” http://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/063575p.pdf”> http://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/063575p.pdf
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COMMENTS
While representatives of CBS may have played a role in getting Janet Jackson to perform at the Super Bowl, it was Justin Timberlake who exposed Janet’s whatevers. So it should have been Justin Timberlake who was fined!
amy i think cbs should had fine justin timberlake becouse it wos his falt for what happening on the stage
Regardless of whether or not the “malfunction” was deliberate, and regardless of whose idea it was if it was deliberate, clearly CBS never meant to air it, and shouldn’t be fined. It was a split-second. We need to grow up & get over it. I was watching the game, and it happened so fast I wasn’t even sure I really saw it.