In an effort to avoid lawsuits or fines PBS has taken steps to censor future movie releases. A spokesperson for the cash strapped network said that nude scenes were not worth the risk anymore thanks to the FCC aggressive censorship policies.
The latest movie in question is "Dirty War" based on the war on terror in which a dirty bomb is detonated in London. The scene in question featured brief female frontal nudity. Using other footage from the movie they managed to remove the scene.
Three other upcoming movies are also going to face language and visual censorship before they air on PBS. In other countries the movies were shown uncensored and HBO is planning to retain the original material uncensored.
who can't take a little bit of reality now and then? Why is the FCC all of a sudden acting like it is the decider of all moral standards in the US? I don't see why nudity would be taken out of a documentary like this... it is in no way sexual, is not presented as such, and would not be viewed in that way. I guess doctors, health classes, etc. should start taking down all posters that depict male and female anatomy, anyone who curses in public should be shot dead on the spot, and we should all take an hour out of our day to lay prostrate in the direction of the FCC HQ, since they stand for all that is good and holy now. :/ Or maybe we should just say F*CK EM, and do things the way we want, instead of having a bunch of out-of-touch idiots dictate to us what we can and can't watch.
Thats so over the top, hey my son's school book has a picture in it explaining the differences between the male and female body, maybe I better burn it....
I can't believe you let your son have biology PORN in his posession. Not only do you need to burn the book but you must beat your child immediately.
What is the world coming to when people like you allow such filth as education to take place. You should not be allowed to have kids. I'm calling the FCC right now.
Seriously though, it is a sad day in our 'free' country when a team of lawyers has to do a 'risk analysis' on everything that is to be broadcast for fear that the FCC will fine them. Let's hope that eventually there will be a backlash against these moral Nazis.
It needs to be shrunk down to handing out signal frequencies.
This "mothers-of-america" organization that feels it needs to shelter all its precious children from the harsh realities of life.... like the "S word" and breasts needs to go away.
Also, anyone have any idea what they're doing with the obscene money they're collecting these days?
I think someone should monitor FCC instead: "Over the past eight years, FCC Commissioners and staff have received almost $2.8 million in travel and entertainment expenses mainly from the telecommunications and broadcast industries that it is supposed to regulate. The number one travel destination is Las Vegas with 330 trips, followed by New Orleans with 173."
"In 2003, public broadcasting in the U.S. received around $365 million in federal funding, about as much as Disney's ESPN receives in subscriber fees from cable TV systems every two months." Aaron Barnhart, "In Public TV We Trust," Electronic Media, 22 July, 2002
"Between 1996 and 2000, the fifty largest media firms and the four media trade organizations spent $111 million on lobbying Congress. " Charles Lewis "Media Money," Columbia Journalism Review, Sept./Oct. 2000 pp. 20-27
relax! You call it autonomy when you do it, censorship when it's done by others!
PBS is choosing to respond to market conditions. You do the same every day, so why assume a posture of feigned injury on behalf of a second-rate organisation that cannot survive without picking the pockets of taxpayers?
The trip stats are somewhat misleading. Las Vegas is the location of the annual NAB meeting, with NO being the location for the annual NAB Radio meeting. To have large numbers of staff going to these two places would be expected - and much less a concern for me for this reason. The NAB meetings are perhaps the most open meeting place you will see for the FCC folks. That is in the "sunshine" compared to much of Washington.
You say why not accept that someone else censors it for me, instead of censoring it myself. But I would still be able to make the decision to censor myself. What if I'm not happy with what they censored, or what if censoring is applied so frequently that I am irritated by it? I would much rather decide what to look at and what not to look at than have a company decide for me.
Censorship is not the same as personal choice. Personally, I find it rather ridiculous that we seem to do more "risk analysis" on what we air on public television than we do on foreign policy and going to war. Obviously, we don't tend to assess those risks very well.
Oh yeah, I forgot -- "Mission Accomplished." My mistake.
And by the way, you shouldn't eat fast food or smoke cigarettes... They're bad for you, but no one is going to stop you even though they can directly impact your health. Maybe if we spent a little less money putting on "Shock and Awe" displays of power, and spent a little more on education we wouldn't have as many problems. Maybe we would even have more intelligent people leading this country. Wow. Imagine that.
Thank you Dubya and your Christian fanatic fiends. No that is not a typo. God forbid we are all attacked by a giant BooB…other than Dubya. Don’t know about Dubya but I look damn fine without any clothes on.
I think it is so funny that here in the US we have the right to do so much without question yet we can not have the right to watch certain content on TV. Most other countries run sexual ads or adult material freely with the option that if you dont want to see it then turn it off or switch the channel. I can though see the reason why the fcc would step in for the PBS channel. That is more of a childrens channel running shows such as seasme street, barney and many other shows that younger kids watch.
