www.snopes.com
by Barbara Mikkelson
The item below is an “Action Alert” issued by the American Family
Association (AFA), an organization headed by the Rev. Donald Wildmon which seeks to protect and preserve “family values” in the entertainment media. (Rev. Wildmon and the AFA have drawn much criticism from opponents of censorship.) The issue this alert covers can’t be described as simply “true” or “false” — as with many such items there’s a kernel of truth here, but it’s one which has been exaggerated for maximum political effect.
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“FCC APPROVES USE OF THE “F” WORD ON TV AND RADIO!
IMMEDIATE ACTION NEEDED NOW!
The Federal Communications Commission has approved the use of the “F” word for use on any TV show or radio program, ANYTIME DAY OR NIGHT!
The FCC said the word can be used whenever desired except in sexual situations!
That means that real soon you will be watching a sit-com on TV, or news, or any drama or movie – ANY PROGRAM – and it’s ok! Hollywood is rejoicing!
Soon, when you are driving your kids to school you will be listening to a song which makes extensive use of the word.
Shock jocks such as Howard Stern are now free to use any language, no matter how vile and repugnant, on their radio shows. And use it they will.
No longer will movies shown on TV have to be edited because of language.
WE MUST ACT NOW TO STOP THIS!
Send your letter to your Congressman, Senators and members of the FCC. Let them know that you want this stopped – NOW!
Please send you letter now. And please forward this letter to your email list asking them to get involved.
If it isn’t stopped now, in a few months verbal pornography will rule the airways!
Please act today. Help us get 1,000,000 email letters to members of Congress, Senators and FCC Commissioners.
Thanks for getting involved!
Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman
American Family Association ”
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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has not “approved the use of the ‘F’ word for use on any TV show or radio program at any time” nor has it issued a ruling making broadcasters “free to use any language, no matter how vile and repugnant.” This issue arose as a result of the annual Golden Globe Awards ceremony held in January 2003, during which singer Bono of the band U2 uttered the phrase “this is really, really, fucking brilliant” (also reported as “this is fucking great”). Bono’s comment was aired, intact, by various television stations, prompting about 200 complaints to the FCC that those TV stations had violated the FCC’s restrictions on obscene broadcasts by carrying that portion of the awards ceremony.
Several months later, in October 2003, the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau issued a response to those complaints in which it maintained that broadcasts of Bono’s words had not violated the FCC’s prohibition of indecent program content because the word “fucking” was a “fleeting and isolated” remark used “as an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation” and not “to describe or depict sexual and excretory organs and activities”:
Indecency findings involve at least two fundamental determinations. First, the material alleged to be indecent must fall within the subject matter scope of our indecency definition — that is, the material must describe sexual or excretory organs or activities . . . Second, the broadcast must be patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium.
As a threshold matter, the material aired during the “Golden Globe Awards” program does not describe or depict sexual and excretory activities and organs. The word “fucking” may be crude and offensive, but, in the context presented here, did not describe sexual and excretory organs and activities. Rather, the performer used the word “fucking” as an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation. Indeed, in similar circumstances, we have found that offensive language used as an insult rather than as a description of sexual or excretory activity or organs is not within the scope of the Commission’s prohibition of indecent program content.
Moreover, we have previously found that fleeting and isolated remarks of this nature do not warrant Commission action. Thus, because the complained-of material does not fall within the scope of the Commission’s indecency prohibition, we reject the claims that this program content is indecent . . .
This statement falls far short of supporting the claim that the FCC has now approved the “f-word” to be used at any time, in any context, in radio and TV programming — it addressed one specific context in which the word was allowed (a “fleeting and isolated” remark used as “an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation”) while reiterating that certain other uses of the “f-word” (describing or depicting “sexual activities”) were still not permissible under current FCC regulations. The FCC maintains that this is not a “relaxation” of their standards but rather a consistent application of standards already in place, but groups such as the AFA maintain that the FCC’s statement represents an increasingly permissive standard regarding broadcast media usage of words traditionally labelled as “obscenities” which cannot be dismissed out of hand as invalid, especially since one of the benchmarks used is “contemporary community standards.” (That is, the more one hears certain language used on radio and television, the more it becomes part of “contemporary community standards” — is television and radio usage the chicken laying the egg which hatches “community standards,” or is it the other way around?)
As always, the times they are a-changin’, and the battle continues between the supporters of preservation and the forces of change.