LOS ANGELES (Sept. 18) — When a federal appeals court ruled last summer that broadcast networks were not responsible for censoring “fleeting expletives” uttered on television, Fox hailed it as a victory for viewers, saying they could decide themselves “what is appropriate viewing for their home.”

But when some performers and award winners blurted out expletives on Sunday night on Fox’s broadcast of the 59th Primetime Emmys — including one that came during antiwar comments — Fox censors hit the delete button, leaving viewers with confusing seconds of dead air and wondering whether the censorship was of language or of political views. Fox said it was only language.

Remarks by Sally Field and Ray Romano — and even an expletive of surprise, spoken away from a microphone by Katherine Heigl — were cut. Dead air replaced the words, and the video cut to a wide shot of the auditorium when performers were deemed by the Fox broadcast standards officials to have gone too far.

Like many live programs, the Emmys show was produced with a delay of several seconds between the live action and the broadcast, allowing network officials time to delete remarks considered offensive.

In a statement issued on Monday, Fox Broadcasting said: “Some language during the live broadcast may have been considered inappropriate by some viewers. As a result, Fox’s broadcast standards executives determined it appropriate to drop sound during those portions of the show.”

The network declined to comment further. But a Fox executive, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to go beyond the official statement, said the network believed that the “fleeting expletives” ruling did not give Fox the right to forgo its responsibility to keep objectionable language off broadcast television.

The three instances of censoring were based solely on the use of profanities and not on the content of the remarks, the Fox executive said. Questions about whether Fox was censoring Ms. Field arose after a portion of her acceptance speech was cut.

Ms. Field used an expletive in saying that if mothers ruled the world, there would be no wars. She won the Emmy for her performance as Nora Walker, a liberal matriarch whose son is headed to Iraq for combat duty, on the ABC drama “Brothers & Sisters.”

Backstage after her acceptance, Ms. Field said she “would have liked to say more four-letter words up there.”

But she added that she “probably shouldn’t have said” the word that was censored. “If they bleep it, oh well, I’ll just say it somewhere else,” she said.

Mr. Romano was censored when he made a joke about his former television wife — Patricia Heaton, his co-star on “Everybody Loves Raymond” — and her new character’s love affair with Kelsey Grammer’s character on “Back to You,” a Fox series that is to have its premiere this week. In doing so, Mr. Romano ignored Fox’s plea to television critics not to reveal the characters’ back story before the series’s broadcast.

Perhaps the most surprising bit of censorship came as Ms. Heigl mouthed a curse word normally associated with frustration or disgust when she was announced as the winner of an Emmy for her role on ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.” The word was not picked up by any microphones, but Fox nevertheless cut away so that viewers could not read Ms. Heigl’s lips and be offended.