In reading IMDB's studio briefing, I found this article interesting. Statements like these seem to illuminate how much the government is doing to curb the rights of free-thinking Americans.
Now Censorship for Deaf People
The executive editor of Frontline, produced by Boston's WGBH for the Public Broadcasting System, has taken exception to a new directive from PBS on how programs are to deal with language that could result in an FCC fine. Writing in Current magazine, Louis Wiley Jr. noted a paragraph in the directive saying that "if the F-word or the S-word were uttered to camera so that viewers could recognize it from the speaker's mouth, the lips must be pixelated." Wiley speculated that at first he imagined such pixelated scenes turning up on the late-night talk shows. "My next thought? If public television producers are forced to not only bleep words but also to pixelate lips, most will simply cut the scenes, no matter how powerful or relevant, rather than see them turned into a joke." Wiley pointed out that last year, Frontline allowed the use of the F-word six times in one clip during a story about a U.S. infantry company in Iraq, when the company was hit by an explosive device. At the time, he said, he made the decision to leave the words in but to alert stations, since they could have been fined $32,500 per utterance. The fine is now 10 times greater. In the end, he said, only 14 stations agreed to run the unedited program. There were no complaints. Wiley concluded: "What is happening behind the scenes is self-censorship, or what I believe is really indirect government censorship. And that is precisely the problem. Editorial decisions that filmmakers, producers and station managers should make with due regard to their standards and those of their local communities are more and more being shaped by fear of a government agency."