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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Indecency fears are out of hand

Eric Mink St. Louis Post-Dispatch

It has come to this: Even the honest words of American soldiers in combat are suspect.

The indecency hysteria gripping our country has so intimidated broadcasters that Tuesday night they pulled the original version of “A Company of Soldiers,” a fine and honorable new “Frontline” documentary about the lives of fighting men and women of the 8th Cavalry Regiment in Baghdad. It was replaced by a sanitized version.

The Public Broadcasting Service was terrified that 13 curse words in the original – exclamations by soldiers either preparing for battle or under attack from roadside bombs, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire – would leave PBS and member stations vulnerable to crippling Federal Communications Commission fines and possibly even the loss of their licenses.

So PBS reversed a long-standing practice. In past instances of documentaries with sensitive content, PBS relied on the internationally acclaimed production team at “Frontline” to deliver a program that conveyed the essential truth of its in-depth reporting. That program was distributed throughout the system, while individual public stations concerned about sensitive content could request an edited version.

This time, however, PBS distributed the sanitized version of “A Company of Soldiers.” Stations that wanted the producers’ more honest depiction of our men and women at war had to sign a waiver absolving PBS of financial liability.

The message to stations was clear: We’re afraid of this program, and you should be, too.

Most got the message. A “Frontline” spokesman in Boston said about 250 of the nation’s 300 public television stations were running the expurgated version of “A Company of Soldiers.” The rest planned to air the original program, he said, but almost all were moving it from its regular 9 p.m. spot to 10 p.m., the start of an eight-hour period when federal indecency rules don’t apply.

“We’re damned if we do, and damned if we don’t,” said James Baum, St. Louis’ KETC-TV’s chief executive. “I want to run the show, but it’s our responsibility to protect our license and to see we don’t run afoul of the FCC.”

Whether this amounts to de facto government censorship of program content or self-censorship for fear of government action may be a distinction without a difference. “I’m not sure I feel intimidated, but we are more cautious today than before the Super Bowl incident and the current climate,” Baum told me.

The relevant Super Bowl “incident,” of course, was the unexpected exposure of one of Janet Jackson’s breasts during the halftime show on CBS in January 2004. Hundreds of thousands of complaints flooded the FCC, which assessed CBS a $550,000 fine. The “current climate” includes passage in the House last week of a bill to boost fines for indecency to $500,000 each.

Prior to his recent resignation as FCC chairman, Michael Powell said the commission was intensifying its enforcement of indecency rules in response to a huge increase in complaints from the public. That depends on your definition of “public.”

In December, the trade journal Mediaweek reported that the FCC had traced more than 99 percent of those inflated complaint numbers for 2003 and 2004 (excluding the Super Bowl complaints) to just one right-wing special-interest group, the Parents Television Council. With just two clicks of a computer mouse, a visitor to the PTC Web site can file a pre-written indecency complaint to the FCC.

The double-standard here is stunning. While there’s no question that many Americans, conservatives and liberals alike, object to indecent media material, it’s also undeniable that Americans prefer to watch, in the privacy of their own homes, shows laden with violent and sexually-oriented content. Nielsen ratings this season, for example, count ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost” and CBS’s “CSI,” “CSI-Miami” and “Without a Trace” among the nation’s most popular shows, to the tune of 16 million to 30 million viewers each week.

And if busy parents put TV indecency high on their list of concerns, it’s reasonable to believe they would use their TVs’ built-in V-chip technology or their cable boxes to block problematic channels and shows. Most don’t bother.

PBS’ fears about “A Company of Soldiers” were flatly irrational. Late last year, for example, the FCC rejected indecency complaints against ABC’s Veterans Day broadcast of “Saving Private Ryan,” even though the Hollywood movie about World War II contains scores of curse words. Fearing FCC sanctions, more than 60 ABC affiliates had yanked it.

Not only does the original “A Company of Soldiers” contain far less cursing than “Saving Private Ryan,” but they all occur in the context of a nonfiction report documenting the actual experiences of real American fighting men and women.

“A Company of Soldiers” follows the service members of the 8th Cavalry’s Dog Company, focusing especially on a tough, tight band of brothers nicknamed the Misfits. The Misfits and thousands of others are risking their lives to secure the blessings of liberty for the people of Iraq. Here at home – safe in our houses, schools and workplaces – the least we can do is stand up to homegrown morality mullahs who try to scare us into giving away our own freedoms.