PBS Feels FCC Chill On Censorship

Shadow Wrought writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting on PBS censoring one of its upcoming drama shows, Cop Shop, due to the chilling effect of the most recent FCC rulings on indecency. Star Richard Dreyfuss offered these choice words as part of a prepared statement, 'It is inescapably censorship under guidelines imposed after the fact by those who are in temporary political power, and so it should be treated as what it is -- a real-world moral and ethical battle with grimly wrongheaded, un-American types who play pick and choose when they define our freedoms of speech and religion as it fits their particular political needs.'"

Comments

"e"

[Homburg]

The apostrophe in possesives replaces the letter 'e'. Back in the day, English, like Latin and German, has a system of 'cases', changed word endings used to denote different uses of words. The genetive (possesive) ending was 'es'. At some point, we stopped using cases, but we still needed a way to denote the possesive, and the apostrophe-s was born.

Re:Here we go ....

[drakaan]

You are a fortunate non-member of the sheeple population, then (the liberal sheeple, not the conservative sheeple, just to be clear). A lot of people wouldn't bother with that thought, they'd just say something rude and comment on America being an imperialist power.

But back to censorship, two of the original infamous "seven" dirty words, the phrase "blow job", and the FCC...

What it comes down to (and this has been batted around so many times that I'm not sure why this latest PBS concession is news), is that public broadcasting stations have different standards that they have to adhere to than private (cable, scrambled satellite) broadcasters do. There are 2 main reasons for it: anybody can watch/listen, and no two communities have quite the same standards for what constitutes indecency as far as speech is concerned.

The reason that the FCC came out with the guidelines that they just about never have to enforce is so people in the more modest of these communities can watch television or listen to the radio during a certain timeframe without having to worry too much about seeing something that they might find offensive. Later at night (when most kids are sleeping), the rules relax, and there have been a number of similar concessions made over the years that have slowly allowed what would traditionally be considered risqe' words, apparel, or behavior to show up on public broadcasts.

It seems to fly in the face of the first amendment, but it is a long standing concession to the problems that decency standards and country-wide media programming have when they butt heads. I personally have no problem with the fact that boobs or other body parts may show up on TV, but I'd rather know about it ahead of time...that's me. I also have no particular problem with swear words (and the phrase "blow job"...whoever bleeped that one was a plain and simple asshat) on TV, although, again, advance warning would be nice. The system is there to protect those at the lower end of the tolerance-for-what-they-call-indecency spectrum. Yes, they can turn it off, or turn the channel, but should they *expect* to see some boobie with their superbowl? I know I didn't.

The reason I would like advance warning is that I consider the words to be a bit too rude to use in the company of people you don't know, and I don't want my kids to inadvertently see that happen. I'd like the opportunity to have them not watch that content until they're a bit older and a little more socially aware (probably 7 or so), and can actually discuss the words with me.

Some people think that's silly and uneccesary, and that's okay. Some people think it's too lax and irresponsible, and that's okay, too. Us disagreeing is fine with me.

So, since the f-word and the s-word are traditionally not heard on the airwaves (for various reasons), why is there so much commotion over the bleeping?