A Federal court has struck down the FCC regulations over “fleeting expletives” due to vagueness and the idea that such vagueness might create a “chilling effect” of self-censorship. Thus, new and specific guidelines are in order.
A few issues arise here:
What is and isn’t acceptable to say on TV and should it be a universal standard? If you’re a poor kid who can only watch TV through basic cable or an antenna, you’ll grow up thinking bad people are melon farmers. If you’re a rich kid whose parents can afford HBO, you get tits and ass, all the swearing you could ever wish for and some graphic violence as a side dish. The idea that children are protected by the boundaries of basic cable seems kind of ridiculous.
As a companion to point 1, how much responsibility falls on parents for what their children consume? A kid whose parents can afford a full cable package has the ability to see all manner of indecency if the parents aren’t around but the remote is. A poor kid might have no exposure to any of the depravity that makes up television but might find him or herself hearing swearwords every day courtesy of the parents and their friends. So Bono says fuck when he’s all excited about an award and that’s worth a big bureaucratic investigation as to what is and isn’t indecent. A poor kid is told by his parents that he’s a worthless piece of shit every day. Crickets are heard chirping at FCC until and unless the parents film it and try to broadcast it (on basic cable only).
The FCC will never silence Opal!
Where does this idea come from that children have to be protected from swearing? When I was a kid, the other kids around me swore like sailors any time adults were not present. They would come up with the most amazingly vulgar things because the bad words were fun to say! When I was in primary school on the very first day another kid taught me how to swear. Was it damaging? Yes it was. Because if that kid hadn’t have taught me how to swear I never would have heard those words anywhere else except on filthy television with its inconsistent censoring!
Sex and violence. It’s generally ok to say shit if you’re not referring to actual shit. It’s ok to say asshole if you’re not referring to the actual asshole. It’s ok to say fuck if you mean it in any other sense than intercourse. So we’re going to end up with a situation where someone can say “fuck you” but not “fuck me”. Sex on television will continue to consist of people kissing and then undressing to undergarments and then tumbling into a bed, fade to black. And then waking up still half dressed and tastefully covered by strategically placed sheets. Meanwhile, I can turn on the TV at any time of day and watch for about five minutes before witnessing a murder. Last night I saw a bit of a Charles Bronson movie (in which he played an actual melon farmer) and I got to see a good dozen people brutally murdered in the fifteen minutes or so that I watched. Several of these victims were police officers. It’s ok for kids to watch that but God forbid they should see two people making love! The trauma of seeing something that they’re going to be trying to do every day once they hit maturity!
So the FCC needs some new guidelines. Children need to be protected against these naughty words which they may or may not hear if they’re paying close attention and watching basic cable all the time, waiting for that slip-up. There’s all manner of indecency out there and we can’t rely on melon farmers to protect us because they’re too busy killing police officers. It’s up to the Dopers now.
I’d just have a rating system. A comprehensive one that has a number of codes for all sorts of things that offend or irritate people, not just a simple letter. People should control their own viewing; but they do need information in order to do so.
As for “protecting kids”, I don’t think that sexual images or swearing are the sort of things they need to be protected from in the first place. I don’t buy the idea that the world should be childproofed.
Not if they keep spreading themselves too thin by looking into insignificant side issues like sex and violence. I’m sure that if they focus on this one important issue success can be had.
I feel you have to use some common sense. First of all there is a time and place for everything. Some people act that if you can’t say the “F-word” anytime you F’ing feel like it, it somehow is the worst thing in the world.
No there is a time and a place for everything.
First of all TV is not an open market. Broadcasters are given permission to USE part of the public spectrum for broadcasting TV. They are given this, in the trust of the people." This means ALL people. Not just the ones that want the “f’word” and other such things anytime of day and those who never want to hear it.
Because broadcasters must serve ALL the people they must cater to ALL markets. This means BOTH groups, this means no one is going to be totally satisfied. They need compromise
The 1st Amendment covers free speech. But as we know this is a LIMITED right. The best example is you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater, when there’s no fire.
Nor can you make speeches that are apt to set off a riot.
The FCC has been relying on broadcasters to use common sense but this isn’t working. So they need to quite muddling around and make specific guidelines with sensible reasons behind it.
They need to levy fines immediately and most importantly STOP the automatic renewel of broadcast licenses. If you aren’t serving the public with your TV or radio, give the allocation to someone else to try.
TV and radio are NOT a free market. Because of spectrum space there can only be so many TV or radio stations in a given area. This means they are similar to a franchise in a city for say cable TV. (Similar not totally analogous)
Or what elucidator said – no restrictions. Possibly some appropriate rating/labeling system, so people can know what they will be watching, but no government restrictions.
No restrictions. But I like the idea of an across board rating system. The U.S. has the most heavily censored television system I’ve watched (comparing to a handful of other western democracies) and it’s annoying to watch a lot on basic cable because of it.
I agree with a rating system. Get some panel of people together, set up some rating system, and then decide how offensive certain things are and rate them. Hell, they already display ratings for most shows now anyway. The difference would be that the channels would sensor themselves based upon their market, it’s not like making it okay to broadcast “fuck” will mean it will be on every show on every channel.
For instance, I imagine most broadcast networks probably still wouldn’t want to allow many curse words during hours when kids are likely to be watching, but I don’t think many people would be too upset if a broadcast station showed an uneditted move that started at 11:00. Similarly, cable/satellite channels can decide their level of audience and their carriers can decide not to carry them, include them in a different package, or employ some technology to block certain levels of content. In fact, most of that sort of stuff is in play already anyway.
The key point for me is that I think the FCC way overstepped their bounds in the first place, as pointed out by t-bonham’s quote of the first amendment. I’d much rather let individuals make those decisions for themselves. I like the idea of making information available to people to allow them to make appropriate decisions, but banning speech to the lowest level of offensiveness is exactly the sort of thing that the first amendment was intended to prevent.
I don’t like restrictions and am not for it at all. I’m fine with hardcore porn and a clip show featuring 2 girls, 1 cup on prime time sandwiched between showings of Sesame Street and The Simpsons.
No restrictions, just ratings. It already works mostly well enough for the movie industry, where they’ll willingly censor themselves in order to get a PG-13 rating instead of R.
If enough people were offended and turned off programs with swearing it would disappear on its own. If not, it proves most people don’t really care about stuff like that. Remove the rules and let her rip.It will sort itself out. Bad language doesn’t hurt any body anyway. If it did ,we would all be damaged by living in the world.
Just throw a disclaimer up after they show the rating, saying that while the show is intended for a certain age range, they aren’t responsible for unscheduled or impromptu vulgarities or nudity. Online video games have a similar warning covering online interactions with other players.
There are almost NO live shows anymore. Game shows, Oprah, Dr. Phil, etc. are all pre-recorded and played from the recording.
Closest would probably be newscasts – they are live, but about half the time is used on pre-recorded segments. We can probably count on the stations to see that their anchor people use only G-rated language, and all the interviews are pre-recorded, so they could bleep anything else.
I can’t think of much else that is broadcast live.
You know, I’ve never found the “public trust” argument terribly persuasive as an argument for regulation of the broadcast spectrum. It’s certainly true that this space is limited - but it’s also entirely useless, absent improvement by private actors (TV stations, antennas, cameras, and so on.) Absent the efforts of private actors, there would be nothing of public value on these bits of the spectrum unless the government decided to produce content itself (as some countries have done, but we do only in a very limited way).
Obviously, we need some regulation, in order to auction off the broadcast spectrum in an orderly way. But beyond that - my inclination is that it should be left to the new owners of that space to improve it as they see fit. The public interest in improvement of otherwise vacant space, whether it’s land or broadcast spectrum, ought to trump almost all other factors.
And use a 5-second delay if it’s, say, an awards show and you’re worried that Kanye West will try to tell the Academy they are a bunch of motherfuckers who can suck his dick, in the middle of someone else’s speech.
Or if the lady in the box seats right behind home plate decides that on a 3-2 count she’s gonna distract the pitcher by dropping her top, just have someone be very alert to immediately switch to the alternate-angle shot.
As for Jackson/Timberlake-class stunts, just make sure that the responsible parties will be promptly, surely and stiffly fined if they breach the rating deliberately – and the network lawyers will surely take care of including in any paid participant’s contract a clause to the effect of “any flashing of the public will result in forfeiture of your appearance fees in addition to any FCC or criminal fine”.
