Soldiers’ Words May Test PBS Language Rules

[Rose Siding]

.....What viewers will see and hear when the series is broadcast in September 2007 is an open question.

A new Public Broadcasting Service policy that went into effect immediately when it was issued on May 31 requires producers whose shows are broadcast before 10 p.m. to adhere to tough editing requirements when it comes to coarse language, to comply with tightened rulings on broadcast indecency by the Federal Communications Commission.

Most notably, PBS’s deputy counsel, Paul Greco, wrote in a memo to stations, it is no longer enough simply to bleep out offensive words audibly when the camera shows a full view of the speaker’s mouth. From now on, the on-camera speaker’s mouth must also be obscured by a digital masking process, a solution that PBS producers have called cartoonish and clumsy.

In addition, profanities expressed in compound words must be audibly bleeped in their entirety so that viewers cannot decipher the words. In the past, PBS required producers to bleep only the offensive part of the compound word.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/arts/television/22pbs.html?ei=5094&en=e46ef6db4a769ba0&hp=&ex=1153540800&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1153539131-rfokDQ4UmZZm4ijgnD28SA

[MADem]

1. FUCKIN' eh....that is so STUPID. What, are we heading back in time

to the fifties, here???

I think a million people or so oughta gather on the mall in DC and chant profanities in unison. They should be directed at assholes who create rules like this.

[regnaD kciN]

2. "Gimme an 'F'...!"

I think a million people or so oughta gather on the mall in DC and chant profanities in unison. They should be directed at assholes who create rules like this.

Just seeing how many people remember Woodstock. ;-)

[MADem]

3. Whusssat SPELL?????

:rofl:

[Oak2004]

5. And I wonder how many people remember *why* the emphisis

on obscenities in the "counterculture" of the late 50s/60s --

It was protest (or at least it started that way -- eventually it did degenerate into pointless coarseness). You said "fuck" as an act of civil disobedience, knowing that you might be charged with a crime for it, and equally knowing that when millions did it they couldn't arrest everyone.

It's time to think very seriously about how to reclaim our freedoms through effective actions, mass or otherwise.

[Hissyspit]

4. I think we should do this here at DU, too.

My fingers are being digitally blurred even now as I type. /sarcasm