Slashdot Mirror
FCC to Regulate 'Profane' Speech
The Importance of writes "The FCC has been regulating 'indecent' speech on the airwaves for quite some time, but have been getting a lot more attention recently. For example, during last year's Golden Globe Awards U2's Bono said 'This is really, really f-ing brilliant.' Last October the FCC ruled that was ok. Yesterday, under political pressure, the FCC overruled that decision. However, for the first time, the FCC also ruled that the f-word is not only 'indecent' but also 'profane.' According to this new decision by the FCC, any speech that is grossly offensive, whether or not it has anything to do with sex or excretion, is 'profane.' This is a major step forward (backward?) for FCC censors. My analysis is here."
Do the FCC even have the right to add new things to the list of what they regulate? It was my understanding that they enforced decency regs, but could not define them.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Many people find Howard Stern's show to be grossly offensive, however many other people love it. If Stern's show really stepped over the line, people would stop listening to it. If people stopped listening to it, the show would be canceled, and he would be off the air.
I don't understand how Republicans get away with this level of hypocrisy. They are in favor of privitization and less Government regulation of businesses, except when it comes to what can be said in the media. Republicans are in favor of states' rights, except when it comes to a state choosing to allow same-sex marraige. Republicans are "ultra-moralistic" in their own minds, impeaching President Bill Clinton for lying about a sexual relationship, but when it comes to a Republican aide in the Senate hacking into sensitive Democrat files, only Orin Hatch has the honor to stand against it.
The FCC's ruling is really, really fucking awful.
~JISA
For example, during last year's Golden Globe Awards U2's Bono said 'This is really, really f-ing [sic] brilliant.'
Who needs the FCC when people decide that words like 'fucking' needs to be self-censored? If you're going to fucking quote someone, fuck, man, QUOTE THEM. You're caving in against your own fucking thesis.
[
you seem to be serious?!? so i'll bite. i'm also a father with children. that's beside the point.
the fcc is effectively acting as the judicial and legislative branches when it's deciding what is and isn't moral for the ears of both adults and of children.
as a father with children, its your responsibility to monitor what goes in those little ears, and to teach those young 'uns some respect along the way. that's how societ has digressed to a more disrespectfull society. not because some T.V. show uses the word shit or fuck too many times. its because the parents aren't there to monitor their children. they're off earning their 6 figure salaries so they can send the kids to daycare and off to after school activities to lessen the family time together.
you don't like what's on the air waves? get rid of the television. you don't like what's on the radio (read: stern), do away with the radio. your children will be better off by it (though i'm not giving mine up, i'll just watch it with the kids).
we don't need some beauracratic (sp) entity to give moral guideance to our children. we need to accept responsibility for our children's upbringing and take action for that. i would much rather have no fcc involvement in the content that is transmitted across the airwaves. sure, i'd personally use my parental controls if there were a 24x7 playboy type channel on the public airwaves, because i think the freedoms outlined in the constitution have more value than the regulations that are far too often implemented.
It doesn't hurt kids to swear, or to hear swearing.
It hurts kids to not teach them boundaries, and to excuse them when they do things 'to get rises out of people.'
" As a father with children, or just a human being for that matter, it's disturbing how society continues to slide towards being more disrespectful and crass toward each other."
And as a father who is raising our kids to understand that words are merely words, and that some are extremely offensive to others, and to have both the maturity and restraint to know WHEN such cases apply, allow me to say that the FCC can go fuck themselves.
This is a MAJOR problem in the US. We keep expecting society to "protect" our children from themselves. Whatever happened to parents actually parenting? Bad things on TV? TURN THE DAMN THING OFF! Read a freakin' book! Play a game with them! Take them hiking! And instill in them a BASIC FREAKIN' MORAL COMPASS and the ability to think critically!
Thank you for supporting the Ban on Nipples on TeeVee, but don't you dare try to shut down wholesome things, like when two football players smack together and one of them gets a broken leg or neck. That shit is the bomb! ...and it helps Timmy build character!
Yeah, right.
I sort of agree wtih you. I dislike how the whole negative connotation that swearing has earned. I view the word fuck as any other word in the English dictionary... A fucking word! It has its general definition, regional variations in usage and context and what not. But that's it. I hate how this whole stipulation of "bad" words keeps on prevailing in America. The same goes for visual censorship. The word fuck is constantly used in everyday language by many people commonly, quite a few still not so commonly, and at least everyone once in their life. Personally, I view the US's energy to censor words and nudity as a weakness. Go to Europe, you'll see a lot more mature view about the human body, and a lot less of the "oh my! taboo" bullshit here. Censorship sucks :(
When I signed up for cable television, I purchased access to crash, abusive, violent, sexual, morbid, humerous, and offensive content. If I wanted to watch purple dinos and signing hand puppets I could get that with public television over the airwaves. I PAID for access to the offensive stuff. I LAUGH at kids getting ninja throwing stars stuck in their eyes.
I did not pay money to have a television raise your fucking kids. I support child care programs with tax dollars, but using laws and regulations to replace parenting with a TV is too much.
--Tsiangkun
People should not be subjected to it or forced to listen to this stuff
Yes, I'm all for repealing the law requiring all citizens to listen to Howard Stern for 3 hours a day.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Let's be honest and clear about this too - it is not just the FCC who is doing this, they are getting lots of pressure from the religious right on these issues. This is a perfect example of how a specialty group is directly influencing the government.
The FCC looks like a bunch of idiots over these issues. They are bringing up issues that are *YEARS* old, and fining people for them. The issue they are fining Howard Stern over is from 2001.
I listen to Stern on occasion, and have been more frequently recently. This morning was a fantastic illustration of how stupid this all is. He played a clip from the Jimmy Kimmel show, where Jimmy was defending Howard. He said that they should be going after the filthiest person on TV - Oprah. Jimmy then played a clip from the Oprah show, where she was talking with some women about sex things. They were laughing and having a good time. One of the women mentioned "tossing salad" , and then proceeded to describe what it was. When Howard played this clip, it was bleeped (time delay removed) from his show. He begged his GM to let him play the clip. It was from Oprah, which runs in the mid-afternoon.
Here is the point - Oprah can get away with this kind of talk on her show, but Howard gets fined for something not nearly as graphic from 2001? He has a great argument - if they play the clip and get fined, the FCC would HAVE to fine Oprah. They would never fine Oprah. If they didn't, they would be obvious hypocrites, and if they did they would be showing the world how stupid they are behaving. You don't mess with Oprah. It would make national news if Oprah was fined for indecency.
It is all a big joke, and the religious right is standing firmly behind this one. They have strong ties to Senators (giving them cheap housing) as well as other government officials. Hell, some government officials ARE part of the religious right - all the way up to the drunk-driving President and Vice President. (1 and 2 offenses respectively)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
This just reminds me, yet again, of how messed up Americans' values are in so many ways, a fact that was first brought to my attention when I went to the United Kingdom (my first trip abroad) back in 1995. Over there, TV is not censored, at least not to the degree that it is here. They leave in nudity, sex, profanity, and all the other stuff. There's very little protest about it because they have a much more mature attitude -- they believe that adults should be allowed to watch whatever they want to watch without having the government tell them whether or not it's OK for them. More importantly, they also believe that if there's a show that has sex, violence, profanity, or anything else they might happen to find offensive, the proper course of action is to change the channel or turn off the set, not to say that nobody else at all should be allowed to see that stuff on TV.
I wish we had that attitude here. As others have said, I find religious junk like "The 700 Club" highly offensive, but I simply don't watch it -- and I don't expect the government to ban it. People who want to see it should be allowed to without government interference, just as people who want to see "Die Hard" uncut should be allowed to without government interference as well.
I [...] am glad that the FCC is FINALLY cracking down. If you want profanity, you've got satellite, cable, or the video/DVD market. If if goes out over public airwaves, there should be restrictions; it is the law, after all....
C'mon. Mod me down and the parent up. Take 7 points away from me, but don't censor people's viewpoints just because they differ from yours.
How did your head not explode as you were writing that down?
Seriously, you post whines about moderation used to "censor" something you agree with AND clamours on about the holy righjeousness of using federal regulations to censor what YOU disagree with.
I think it should be illegal to be that contradictory.
You can't take the sky from me...
We need to realize what actually is and isn't a bad influence on everybody (face it, kids aren't the only ones to condone violence because they are over-exposed to it). Profanity only has power if we grant it power, and censoring it is the fastest way to do that. There's nothing wrong with saying "oh shit" if we say that there isn't, but murder is always wrong.
Basically, the FCC needs to censor and rate less on content and more on themes. Murder seems to be ok if you don't show the actual murder scene, and that just doesn't make sense. It works the same way for drug use, robbery, arsen, you name it.
I'd much prefer to walk down the halls of a high school and hear "fuck, that test was hard" than "Darn, that was a hard test, I'd like to kill Mr. Smith for giving it to us."
Agreed. The most obscene speech lately is that coming out of Michael Powell's mouth. Instead of legilating and fining these things out of existence, parents should be teaching their children how to deal with it, typically by changing the station. This nation wants to blame society every time something goes wrong and then try to 'fix' society. It's always the wrong fix. If you're worried about what the children can see and be affected, start with the people who control those things--parents. And not by legislating the fix. By smacking them in the head every time they want the government to raise their kids for them.
Our founding fathers removed the guys in charge. Be American. Vote incumbents out.