Bob's Links and Rants

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Thursday, November 11, 2004

Censoring Private Ryan

According to the Yahoo TV guide, our local ABC affiliate, WXYZ, was not going to wimp out. It was going to show the uncut "Saving Private Ryan," blood and guts and f-word and all. Wrong. We got Matlock and some wussy Thanksgiving special. At least 20 ABC stations did drop the movie out of fear of FCC fines and sanctions. WIIIAI adds:
Now, this isn’t just tv stations running scared and preemptively censoring themselves, post-Janet Jackson: the FCC could easily have stopped this nonsense by giving an advance waiver. Considering that the FCC already ruled in 2002 that Saving Private Ryan is not indecent, in response to a complaint by idiot puritan Donald Wildmon, this should have been a no-brainer, but the FCC instead told the stations to exercise their own judgment and risk the consequences. As far as I’m concerned, that decision to leave the threat of a multi-million-dollar fine hanging over the stations’ heads amounted to an act of state censorship.
During the three-day coup in Venezuela in April 2002, the fascists who briefly took over the government played monkey shows and the like nonstop on the TV networks so that the people would have no idea what was going on. That's pretty much where we are here.