A three judge panel for the 3rd US Circuit of Appeals today threw out a $550,000 indecency fine against CBS. The FCC levied the fine in 2004 after a Super Bowl incident in which singer Justin Timberlake tore off part of Janet Jackson’s clothing revealing her right breast with only a small star covering it.
The panel ruled that the FCC acted unfairly in imposing the fine because it had previously exempted fleeting indecency in broadcast programming from punishment.
“The Commission’s determination that CBS’s broadcast of a nine-sixteenths of one second glimpse of a bare female breast was actionably indecent evidenced the agency’s departure from its prior policy,” the court said.
Sources: http://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/063575p.pdf,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/business/media/22FCC.html?ref=us
