The seven dirty words are seven English-language curse words that American comedian George Carlin first listed in his 1972 "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" monologue. The words, in the order Carlin listed them, are: "shit", "piss", "fuck", "cunt", "cocksucker", "motherfucker", and "tits".
Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that upheld the ability of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate indecent content sent over the broadcast airwaves.
Michael Kevin Powell is an American attorney and lobbyist who served as the 24th chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 2001 to 2005. Since leaving office, Powell has since worked as the president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), a broadband industry trade association.
The fairness doctrine of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, was a policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints. In 1987, the FCC abolished the fairness doctrine, prompting some to urge its reintroduction through either Commission policy or congressional legislation. The FCC removed the rule that implemented the policy from the Federal Register in August 2011.
WCAV is a television station in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, affiliated with CBS and Fox. It is owned by Lockwood Broadcast Group alongside low-power ABC affiliate WVAW-LD. The two stations share studios on Rio East Court in Charlottesville; WCAV's transmitter is located on Carters Mountain south of the city.
Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission, 395 U.S. 367 (1969), was a seminal First Amendment ruling at the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court held that radio broadcasters enjoyed free speech rights under the First Amendment, but those rights could be partially restricted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to maintain the public interest in equitable use of scarce broadcasting frequencies. As a result, the FCC's Fairness Doctrine was found to be constitutional.
Ronald Lawrence Buckwalter is an inactive senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
A fleeting expletive is a non-scripted verbal profanity or obscenity expressed and broadcast during a live television broadcast or radio broadcast. The term appears primarily in discussions of United States broadcasting law.
National Assn. of Home Builders v. Defenders of Wildlife, 551 U.S. 644 (2007), was a United States Supreme Court case about federal jurisdiction over anti-pollution statutes. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the opinion of the Court, holding that the Endangered Species Act did not require the Environmental Protection Agency to apply additional criteria when evaluating a transfer of pollution control jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act. Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer wrote dissenting opinions.
Harbison v. Bell, 556 U.S. 180 (2009), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that held that federal law gave indigent death row inmates the right to federally appointed counsel to represent them in post-conviction state clemency proceedings, when the state has declined to do so. Certiorari was granted by the Supreme Court on June 23, 2008.
Robert L. "Bob" Corn-Revere is an American First Amendment lawyer. Corn-Revere is the Chief Counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and was formerly a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP in Washington, D.C. He is regularly listed as a leading First Amendment and media law practitioner by The Best Lawyers in America (Woodward/White), SuperLawyers Washington, D.C., and by Chambers USA . Best Lawyers in America named him as Washington, D.C.’s 2017 “Lawyer of the Year” in the areas of First Amendment Law and Litigation – First Amendment. He was again named as Best Lawyers’ “Lawyer of the Year” for First Amendment Law for 2019 and 2021, and in Media Law for 2022.
Federal Communications Commission v. AT&T Inc., 562 U.S. 397 (2011), was a United States Supreme Court case on aspects of corporate personhood. It held that the exemption from Freedom of Information Act disclosure requirements for law enforcement records which "could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy" does not protect information related to corporate privacy.
McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 514 U.S. 334 (1995), is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that an Ohio statute prohibiting anonymous campaign literature is unconstitutional because it violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects the freedom of speech. In a 7–2 decision authored by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Court found that the First Amendment protects the decision of an author to remain anonymous.
FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc. refers to two related Supreme Court cases:
Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., 567 U.S. 239 (2012), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States regarding whether the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's scheme for regulating speech is unconstitutionally vague. The Supreme Court excused the broadcasters from paying fines levied for what the FCC had determined indecency, in a majority opinion delivered by Justice Anthony Kennedy. The Supreme Court had previously issued an opinion in the case in 2009 addressing the nature of the fine itself, without addressing the restriction on indecent speech.
American Broadcasting Cos., Inc. v. Aereo, Inc, 573 U.S. 431 (2014), was a United States Supreme Court case. The Court ruled that the service provided by Aereo, which allowed subscribers to view live and time-shifted streams of over-the-air television on Internet-connected devices, violated copyright laws.
Actionable indecency is a legal doctrine held by the Federal Communications Commission since the 1978 FCC vs. Pacifica case, that broadcast speech can be regulated even if it does not contain the seven dirty words deemed "indecent".
Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, No. 17-1702, 587 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case related to limitations on First Amendment-based free speech placed by private operators. The Court held that a public access station was not considered a state actor for purposes of evaluating free speech issues in a 5–4 ruling split along ideological lines. Prior to the Court's decision, analysts believed that the case had the potential to determine whether limitations on free speech on social media violate First Amendment rights. However, the Court's narrow holding avoided that issue.
Federal Communications Commission v. Prometheus Radio Project, 592 U.S. ___ (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with media ownership rules that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) can set under the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The case dates back to the Third Circuit rulings from 2002 that have blocked FCC decisions to relax media ownership rules related to cross-ownership of newspapers with television and radio broadcast stations. In the present case, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in April 2021 that the FCC had not made arbitrary and capricious rulemaking decisions in the context of the Administrative Procedure Act, nor had the requirement to review minority ownership of stations under Congressional mandate as stated in the Third Circuit's ruling, reversing this last ruling and allowing the FCC to proceed to relax cross-media ownership rules.
Federal Communications Commission v. Sanders Brothers Radio Station, 309 U.S. 470 (1940), was an early precedent on the enforcement of broadcasting law in the United States. The Supreme Court held that when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) makes spectrum allocation decisions regarding the use of broadcast frequencies by radio stations, such decisions should be made to serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity as defined by the Communications Act of 1934. Consequently, such decisions by the FCC do not need to consider the profitability or business interests of the companies assigned such frequencies, or those of their competitors.
