quote:
Fearful US TV networks censor more shows
Dominic Timms
Tuesday January 18, 2005
The panic that is gripping American TV bosses facing a puritanical backlash or exorbitant government fines has today extended to a cartoon series and a BBC drama.
Fox TV has decided to pixelate a bare derriere in a cartoon series, The Family Guy, which was originally broadcast five years ago with no complaints.
And American public television network PBS is censoring BBC drama documentary Dirty War, wary of attracting a public backlash and fines from the federal watchdog.
PBS, the American public television network, said it would cut scenes featuring a naked woman being decontaminated in a shower, in the film that centres on the aftermath of a dirty bomb attack on London.
Fox TV has already been hit by fines from the Federal Communications Commission with its network of affiliate stations each fined $7,000 in October for airing Married by America, a reality series in which a female contestant was seen licking cream from a male stripper's chest.
With its affiliate stations already rapped, FCC is now considering a record $1.2m fine for the Fox network for the same offence.
"We have to be checking and second-guessing ourselves now," Gail Berman, the head of Fox Entertainment, told Variety today.
PBS said it would use other footage from the film to show the woman from a different angle.
The BBC drama, which is distributed by cable giant HBO in the US. is part of a parcel of three films the network is donating to PBS in order to show its programming to a wider audience.
But fearful of a backlash from Christian and decency groups and increasingly stiff fines from regulators that apply to mainstream television but not to cable channels. PBS said it would cut the film.
The PBS president, Pat Mitchell, said it was making the cuts in order to protect local stations from potential fines from the FCC.
"Cable doesn't have to live with those regulations - we do," Mr Mitchell told delegates during a company briefing, adding that it would also cut an expletive used by the vice-president, Dick Cheney, in Sometimes in April, a film about the Rwandan genocide.
While the FCC has been accused by some groups of deliberately undercounting complaints, it has nevertheless shown an appetite for hitting stations with substantial fines.
Last year CBS parent Viacom was given a $500,000 fine for showing a sub-one second glimpse of Janet Jackson's breast during the Super Bowl half-time show.
Fearful of even the slightest protest, Fox this year turned down an advert for a cold remedy because it contained a brief flash of 84-year-old actor Mickey Rooney's bottom.
Other networks are also being ultra-cautious - late last year 66 stations in the ABC network refused to show Steven Spielberg's second world war drama, Saving Private Ryan, because of its explicit language.
Groups such as the Parents Television Council, and the American Decency Association have become increasingly adept at harnessing the power of the internet and email in particular to lobby for what they call family friendly TV.
Supporters can simply email the groups website to have their complaint sent through to the relevant sector within the FCC.
Just last week the PTC urged supporters to mount an email campaign against CBS for re-broadcasting an episode of missing person drama Without a Trace which attracted around 7,500 complaints when it was first shown because it featured scenes of a "teenage orgy".
"As if it isn't bad enough that CBS/Viacom was so irresponsible to air this rubbish once at a time when millions of children were in the viewing audience, they chose to air it again - this time on the heels of their Consent Decree in which they admitted to violating indecency laws and promised to take immediate steps not to do it again," said Tim Winter, the executive director of the PTC.
"We are urging our members and other concerned citizens to file indecency complaints with the FCC about this rebroadcast."
This is by way of a follow-on to recent discussions regarding free specch respectively in the US and other places. This is often touted as one of the most important of America's virtues but as we can see the networks can be described as "fearful" of such censorship. And this is not even adressing othe overt political partisanship of Fox, nor the national partisanship of CNN.
Again the Janet Jackson episode demonstrates the vast, vast gulf between the nominal theory and practice. To have handed out the biggest fine in FCC history (I understand) for this "offense" suggests a country obsessed by trivia and froth.
Recently Ali G, a comedian, had to be escorted from a venue in Roanoke after criticism the American occupation of Iraq. Link here:
http://keyetv.com/...ories/topstoriestv_story_014125513.html His main offense was to say "I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards, and may George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq."
Taken in conjunction with the inability of US media to criticise the state, nor report alternate views, nor show real depictions of the Iraqi casualties, or to fall in line with the government by refusing to discuss civilian casualties, or by using the emotive and misleading term "insurgents", it seems to me that the US media establishment is now wholly committed to the service of the state apparatus, and not in a good way.
Goerge Monbiot remarks that: "The incident couldn't have been more helpful to Bush. Though there is no question that he managed to avoid serving in Vietnam, the collapse of CBS's story suggested that all the allegations made about his war record were false, and the issue dropped out of the news. CBS was furiously denounced by the rightwing pundits, with the result that between then and the election, hardly any broadcaster dared to criticise George Bush. Mary Mapes, the producer whom CBS fired, was the network's most effective investigative journalist: she was the person who helped bring the Abu Ghraib photos to public attention. If the memos were faked, the forger was either a moron or a very smart operator.
It's true, of course, that CBS should have taken more care. But I think it is safe to assume that if the network had instead broadcast unsustainable allegations about John Kerry, none of its executives would now be looking for work. How many people have lost their jobs, at CBS or anywhere else, for repeating bogus stories released by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth about Kerry's record in Vietnam? How many were sacked for misreporting the Jessica Lynch affair? Or for claiming that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons programme in 2003? Or that he was buying uranium from Niger, or using mobile biological weapons labs, or had a hand in 9/11? How many people were sacked, during Clinton's presidency, for broadcasting outright lies about the Whitewater affair? The answer, in all cases, is none. "
A televisual fairyland | George Monbiot | The Guardian
So, does the US have anything remotely resembling a free press, or is it all PRAVDA, christian bigotry and mandatory nationalism as it appears?
[footnote: oh yes, Channel 4 news reported that the film 'Ray' had been turned down by all major distributors as being too "african american".]
This message has been edited by contracycle, 01-18-2005 08:21 AM
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