A Sad State Of Affairs

[Roland]

TV Stations Cancel 'Saving Private Ryan'

By LEON DROUIN KEITH

Many ABC affiliates around the country have announced that they won't take part in the network's Veterans Day airing of "Saving Private Ryan," saying the acclaimed film's violence and language could draw sanctions from the Federal Communications Commission.

The decisions mark a twist in the conflict over the aggressive stand the FCC has taken against obscenity and profanity since Janet Jackson flashed the world during the last Super Bowl halftime show.

Steven Spielberg's Oscar-winning movie aired on ABC with relatively little controversy in 2001 and 2002, but station owners - including several in large markets - are unnerved that airing it Thursday could bring federal punishment. The film includes a violent depiction of the D-Day invasion and profanity.

"It would clearly have been our preference to run the movie. We think it's a patriotic, artistic tribute to our fighting forces," Ray Cole, president of Citadel Communications, told AP Radio. The company owns WOI-TV in Des Moines, KCAU-TV in Sioux City and KLKN-TV in Lincoln, Neb.

Other stations choosing to replace the movie with other programming include Atlanta's WSB-TV, WFAA-TV of Dallas, WGNO-TV of New Orleans, WCPO-TV of Cincinnati, WSYX-TV of Columbus, WISN-TV of Milwaukee, WSOC-TV of Charlotte, N.C., WVEC-TV of WMUR-TV of Manchester, N.H., WHAS-TV of Louisville, Ky. and KVUE-TV of Austin, Texas. They are owned by a variety of companies, including Cox Television, Tribune Broadcasting Corp., Hearst-Argyle Television Inc., Belo Corp. and Sinclair Broadcast Group.

"We regret that the FCC, given its current timidity in dealing in this area, would not grant an advance waiver, which would have allowed stations like ours to run it without any question or any concern," Cole said.

In a statement on WSB-TV's Web site, the Atlanta station's vice president and general manager, Greg Stone, cited a March ruling in which the FCC said an expletive uttered by rock star Bono during NBC's live airing of the 2003 Golden Globe Awards was both indecent and profane.

The agency made it clear then that virtually any use of the F-word - which is used repeatedly in "Saving Private Ryan" - was inappropriate for over-the-air radio and television.

The Bono case "reversed years of prior policy that the context of language matters," Stone said. He added that broadcasters could not get any clarification from the FCC on whether the movie violates the standard.

ABC, which broadcast the film uncut in 2001 and 2002, issued a statement saying it is proud to broadcast it again. The network's contract with director Spielberg stipulates that the film cannot be edited.

"As in the past, this broadcast will contain appropriate and clear advisories and parental guidelines," the statement said.

Several stations said ABC had rejected their requests to air the movie after 10 p.m.

An FCC spokeswoman said Wednesday that the agency does not monitor television broadcasts, but responds to complaints. The agency received a complaint after the 2001 broadcast of "Saving Private Ryan," but it was denied, she said.

WSOC-TV of Charlotte said it received complaints about language in the movie when it aired in 2001 and 2002.

"Now, after much concern and discussion about family viewing over past months, and with Americans at war across the world, it is the vivid depiction of violence combined with graphic language proposed to begin airing at 8 p.m. that has forced our decision," said Lee Armstrong, the station's vice president and general manager.

ABC has told its affiliates it would cover any fines, but Cole, of Citadel, said the network could not protect its affiliates against other FCC sanctions.

The FCC has stepped up enforcement of its decency standards for certain content following this year's Super Bowl halftime show, in which one of Janet Jackson's breasts was exposed.

Profane speech, which is barred from broadcast radio and television between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., is defined by the FCC as language that is "so grossly offensive to members of the public who actually hear it as to amount to a nuisance," or epithets that tend "to provoke violent resentment."

The guidelines say the context in which such material appears is of critical importance.

Cole cited recent FCC actions and last week's re-election of President Bush as reasons for replacing "Saving Private Ryan" on Thursday with a music program and the TV movie "Return to Mayberry."

"We're just coming off an election where moral issues were cited as a reason by people voting one way or another and, in my opinion, the commissioners are fearful of the new Congress," Cole said.

[Roughneck]

November 21, 2004
FRANK RICH
Bono's New Casualty: 'Private Ryan'

As American soldiers were dying in Falluja, some Americans back home spent Veteran's Day mocking the very ideal our armed forces are fighting for ­ freedom. Ludicrous as it sounds, 66 ABC affiliates revolted against their own network and refused to broadcast "Saving Private Ryan." The reason: fear. Not fear of terrorism or fear of low ratings but fear that their own government would punish them for exercising freedom of speech.

If the Federal Communications Commission could slap NBC after Bono used an expletive to celebrate winning a Golden Globe, then not even Steven Spielberg's celebration of World War II heroism could be immune from censorship. The American Family Association, which mobilized the mob against "Ryan," was in full blaster-fax and e-mail rage. Its scrupulous investigation had found that the movie's soldiers not only invoked the Bono word 21 times but also, perhaps even more indecently, re-enacted "graphic violence" in the battle scenes. How dare those servicemen impose their filthy mouths and spilled innards on decent American families! In our new politically correct American culture, war is always heck.

The stations that refused to show the movie were not just in Baton Rouge and Biloxi but in cities like Boston, Detroit, Cleveland and Baltimore. For some reason, a number of them replaced "Ryan" with the 1986 movie "Hoosiers," the heartwarming tale of high school basketball players who claw their way to the championship in 1950's Indiana. But even Indiana and jocks have no immunity from the indecency cops in 2004. Less than 48 hours after "Hoosiers" supplanted the censored "Ryan," the Pittsburgh Panthers quarterback Tyler Palko used the Bono word in a live interview with NBC Sports's Tom Hammond after his team's upset of Notre Dame. Unless the F.C.C. wants to open a legal Pandora's box, it now has no choice but to apply the same principles to a victorious football player's spontaneous expletive that it did to a victorious rock star's.

For anyone who doubts that we are entering a new era, let's flash back just a few years. "Saving Private Ryan," with its "CSI"-style disembowelments and expletives undeleted, was nationally broadcast by ABC on Veteran's Day in both 2001 and 2002 without incident, and despite the protests of family-values groups. What has changed between then and now? A government with the zeal to control both information and culture has received what it calls a mandate. Media owners who once might have thought that complaints by the American Family Association about a movie like "Saving Private Ryan" would go nowhere are keenly aware that the administration wants to reward its base. Merely the threat that the F.C.C. might punish a TV station or a network is all that's needed to push them onto the slippery slope of self-censorship before anyone in Washington even bothers to act. This is McCarthyism, "moral values" style.

What makes the "Ryan" case both chilling and a harbinger of what's to come is that it isn't about Janet Jackson and sex but about the presentation of war at a time when we are fighting one. That some of the companies whose stations refused to broadcast "Saving Private Ryan" also own major American newspapers in cities as various as Providence and Atlanta leaves you wondering what other kind of self-censorship will be practiced next. If these media outlets are afraid to show a graphic Hollywood treatment of a 60-year-old war starring the beloved Tom Hanks because the feds might fine them, toy with their licenses or deny them permission to expand their empires, might they defensively soften their news divisions' efforts to present the graphic truth of an ongoing war? The pressure groups that are exercised by Bono and "Saving Private Ryan" are often the same ones who are campaigning to derail any news organization that's not towing the administration line in lockstep with Fox.

Even without being threatened, American news media at first sanitized the current war, whether through carelessness or jingoism, proving too credulous about everything from weapons of mass destruction to "Saving Private Lynch" to "Mission Accomplished." During the early weeks of the invasion, carnage of any kind was kept off TV screens, as if war could be cost-free. Once the press did get its act together and exercised skepticism, it came under siege. News organizations that report facts challenging the administration's version of events risk being called traitors. As with "Saving Private Ryan," the aim of the news censors is to bleach out any ugliness or violence. But because the war in Iraq, unlike World War II, is increasingly unpopular and doesn't have an assured triumphant ending, it must also be scrubbed of any bad news that might undermine its support among the administration's base. Thus the censors argue that Abu Ghraib, and now a marine's shooting of a wounded Iraqi prisoner in a Falluja mosque, are vastly "overplayed" by the so-called elite media.

President Bush tried to turn the campaign, in part, into a referendum on Hollywood's lack of a "heart and soul." Now that he's won, administration apparatchiks have declared his victory a repudiation not just of Hollywood's dream factory but of the news industry's reality factory. "The biggest loser was the mainstream media," wrote Peggy Noonan in an online analysis for The Wall Street Journal after Election Day. She predicted that institutions like the networks, The New York Times and, presumably, the print edition of her own newspaper (editorial page excepted) were on their way to being rendered extinct by "the blogosphere and AM radio and the Internet" ­ in other words, by opinion writers like herself.

In this diet of "news" championed by the right, there's no need for actual reporters who gather facts firsthand by leaving their laptops and broadcast booths behind and risking their lives to bear witness to what is actually happening on the ground in places like Falluja and Baghdad. The facts of current events can become as ideologically fungible as the scientific evidence supporting evolution. Whatever comforting version of events supports your politics is the "news."

[Roughneck]

The reductio ad absurdum of such a restricted news diet is Jim Bunning, the newly re-elected senator from Kentucky. During the campaign he drew a blank when asked to react to the then widely circulated story of an Army Reserve unit in Iraq, including one soldier from his own state, that refused to follow orders to carry out what it deemed a suicide fuel-delivery mission. "I don't read the paper" is how he explained his cluelessness. "I haven't done that for the last six weeks. I watch Fox News to get my information." That's his right as a private citizen, though even Fox had some coverage of that story. But as a senator, he has the power to affect decisions on the conduct of the war and to demand an accounting of the circumstances under which one of his own constituents was driven to revolt against his officers. Instead Mr. Bunning was missing in action.

He is, however, a role model of the compliant citizen the Bush administration wants, both in officialdom and out. In a memorable passage in Ron Suskind's pre-election article on the president in The New York Times Magazine, a senior White House adviser tells Mr. Suskind that there's no longer any need for the "reality-based community" epitomized by journalists. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," the adviser says. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality." A test run of this approach dates at least as far back as May 2003, a week after the president declared the end of major combat operations. When a reporter told Donald Rumsfeld in a Pentagon press briefing that "journalists in Iraq report that a sense of public order is still lacking," the secretary of defense ridiculed journalists for showing only "slices of truth." The reconstruction effort, couldn't anyone see, was right on track.

The creation of this alternative reality has been perfected into an art form in Falluja. Almost everything the administration has said about this battle is at odds with the known facts. "There are over 3,000 Iraqi soldiers who are leading the activities," said the now outgoing deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, as the operation began and those Iraqi troops were paraded before the cameras. But as Edward Wong of The Times later reported, the Iraqis actually turned up in battle only after the hard work was done, their uniforms "spotless from not having done a lick of fighting." Meanwhile, another group of crack Iraqi trainees fled their posts in Mosul, allowing the insurgents, and possibly our current No. .1 evildoer, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to wreak havoc there while Americans were chasing their ghosts in Falluja.

Casualties are also now being whipped into an empire's idea of reality. "We don't do body counts," said Tommy Franks as we fought in Afghanistan in 2002 ­ an edict upheld in a press briefing in Iraq as recently as Nov. 9 by the American commander Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz. But only five days later, as the "reality-based" news spread that many of the insurgents had melted away before we got to them, that policy was sacrificed to the cause of manufacturing some good news to drive out the bad. Suddenly there was a body count of 1,200 to 1,600 insurgents in Falluja, even though reporters on the scene found, as The Times reported, "little evidence of dead insurgents in the streets and warrens where some of the most intense combat took place." By possibly inflating both body counts and the fighting prowess of the local army against guerrillas, the Bush administration is constructing a "Mission Accomplished II" that depends on a quiescent press (as well as on a public memory so short that it won't notice the similarity between the Falluja narrative and Tet).

As the crunch comes, we'll learn whether media companies will continue to test such Iraq war stories against "reality-based" reportage, or whether they'll kowtow to an emboldened administration, spurred on by its self-proclaimed mandate and its hard-right auxiliary groups, that can reward or punish them at will. For now the most dominant Falluja image has been that of the "Marlboro Man" ­ the Los Angeles Times photo of the brave American marine James Blake Miller, his face bloodied and soiled by combat, his expression resolute. It is, as Mr. Rumsfeld might say, a slice of truth. But other slices ­ like the airlifting of hundreds of American troops to Germany to be treated for the traumatic fallout of Falluja's graphic violence ­ are, like "Saving Private Ryan" on Veteran's Day, missing from too many Americans' screens.

[LS]

This has become the most twisted place on the face of the earth. Just like with theatrical movies- TV programs are rated as far as content...you don't wanna see it?? Too much for you to handle?? Then just don't watch it- DUH.

The latest one's enough to make me puke too...blastin' Monday Night Football and Terrell Owens for that supposedly 'suggestive' opening skit ...Thing is- MNF draws a mostly male audience- and I've yet to find a guy- (or any other regular women)- who found it offensive Matter of fact it was pretty tame compared to the usual former opening with Hank Jr. and a bunch of silicone sister cheerleaders bouncing around who showed more flesh than most women do on a 90 degree July day at the beach. It wasn't even as 'suggestive' as an average episode of Baywatch or any daytime soap. It's too obvious the 'complainers' aren't the game's regular audience- just troublemakers- and I've 'bout had it up to here with the bible thumpin' moralists already. How come they haven't deluged the stations and the FCC with complaints against the show it was supposed to be a promo for?? Have never seen it myself- but from what I've read about it- sounds like some pretty racy stuff...I mean one story line has one of these much older housewives having an affair with an underage teenage boy. But funny- I don't hear 'em screaming to get that show yanked off the air...(and apparently it's actually one of the highest rated shows. )

Maybe the moralist crowd oughtta worry more about concentrating on livin' their very own lives according to their good book to gain entrance to those pearly gates instead of stickin' their noses into everybody else's lives and quit trying to dictate to everybody else how they should live theirs...that 'do unto others' and 'live and let live' thing.'

[SanAntonioMike]

Well, I'll tell ya, Sis, I figure it's the S-E-X. They'll get to Desperate Housewives soon enough, but since ABC is one of those big corporations with bottom lines to worry about, it'll stay on the air.

Saving Private Ryan brings out the loonies on both sides. Violence and swearing is okay, because it honors war, and that's a good thing. A woman's naked back, now, that's bad. Nudity implies sex. Sex implies... well, children. And that might bring on an abortion. Stop it all and then there won't be any problems.

Of course, we have Saving Private Ryan on tape, so when I showed it to my daughter (whom I deemed old enough to understand it), I was able to talk to her seriously about it. In a couple of years, I'll show it to my son. In the meantime, I know how to turn a TV off if there's something on I don't want my kids to see.

[LS]

But that's the difference SAM- you're an example of a good, responsible parent and you know (and care about) what your kids are capable of understanding or whether they're not quite there yet- you set limits and guidelines and teach them values and morals- you don't expect other people to do that for you...Too many others shirk that responsibility and instead of doing a proper job of parenting- it's just easier for them to blame 'other people' for their own laziness, negligence and all 'round lack of involvement.

[snizz]

CBS, NBC Reject Church's Ad

ITS MESSAGE DEEMED TOO CONTROVERSIAL

BY JOHN RILEY
NEWSDAY STAFF WRITER

December 2, 2004

Tolerance has, apparently, become too hot to handle for CBS and NBC.

The two television networks have refused to air a commercial produced by the progressive United Church of Christ with the message "Jesus didn't turn people away. Neither do we," because of concerns that it implied criticism of other denominations for not accepting gays.

The 30-second ad, part of a $1.7-million national campaign to attract new members, begins by showing two muscular bouncers in front of an unnamed church refusing admission to selected worshipers. They turn away a pair of men, a foreign-looking young girl, a non-white man and a man in a wheelchair with phrases like "Not you," while admitting two white women and a white man and woman.

Then the ad concludes with a montage of faces - two young girls, a black couple, an elderly couple and two women - as an announcer says, "No matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here."

The ad was scheduled to begin airing on Fox and a dozen cable stations yesterday, and was not offered to ABC because that network has a strict ban on religious ads. It was rejected by NBC and CBS as "too controversial," the church said.

"Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations, and the fact the Executive Branch has recently proposed a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast," CBS wrote in a letter released by the church's national office.

The church said the networks were distorting the message. "The ad is not advocating a particular issue," said spokeswoman Barb Powell. "It highlights the fact that Jesus welcomed all people and targets those who have felt alienated for whatever reason by church in general."

Both networks, experts say, have established policies against accepting advocacy ads on hot-button issues such as abortion and gun rights. In a well-publicized incident earlier this year, that policy led CBS to refuse to sell a Super Bowl ad attacking President George W. Bush to MoveOn.org.

Both CBS and NBC said yesterday that they had agreed to accept one of two ads produced by the United Church of Christ that it found inoffensive, but barred the second ad because of its potential divisiveness. NBC did not mention gay marriage, but said it was troubled by the implicit criticism of other denominations.

"The controversy stems from its suggestion that other churches are not open to all people," said NBC spokeswoman Shannon Jacobs.

The 1.4-million member United Church of Christ is a progressive denomination with liberal attitudes on issues such as gay marriage.

Church officials said yesterday that it was hypocritical for the networks to air dramas featuring gay characters, but bar their ad.

Other critics were suspicious of a tilt in the networks' policies, which rendered them blind to any controversy over ads for commercial products such as Viagra, and more sensitive to the totems of the right than those of the left.

"If there's one thing you wouldn't think would violate family values, it would be encouraging church attendance," said Harold Feld of the Media Access Project, a Washington public interest group. "But these guys have become so sensitive to the perceived sensibilities of folks on the right that they're just getting ridiculous."

[snizz]

Advocates Need Not Apply
by Paul Vitello

December 2, 2004

The big network news this week was all about the departures of Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather from their anchor jobs of many years at NBC and CBS, respectively. And we wish them well, of course. Bon voyage, Dan. Toodaloo, Tom.

But less-ballyhooed and more important news, I think, was a recent decision by those two networks that will likely receive no mention by Tom or Dan or their replacements.

It's about the networks' refusal to air a commercial that espouses a set of religious values different from those held by President George W. Bush and other conservative Christians.

In the 30-second ad, prepared by the 1.4-million-member United Church of Christ, and which you will never see on CBS or NBC, two bouncers are seen standing in front of a church as people approach, selecting those who may and may not enter. They bar a variety of people, including two men who appear to be a gay couple, though nothing in the ad explicitly identifies them as such. The voice-over in the ad simply says: "No matter who you are, no matter where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here."

That's it. The message, well-grounded in the traditional teaching of a traditional church, is basically welcome one and all. Implicitly, it is in conflict with the more fundamentalist Christian view that considers the practice of homosexuality unacceptable. But there you have it. E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

Except on the airwaves we license to these networks.

"Because the commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples ... and the fact that the Executive Branch has recently proposed a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast," CBS explained in a letter released yesterday by the United Church of Christ.

A CBS spokesman said that with the exception of political ads, it was the network's long-standing policy to reject any "advocacy advertisements."

"If there is a public policy debate going on, as there is on the issue of gay marriage, we do not accept advocacy advertisements," said Dana McClintock of CBS.

A spokesman for NBC did not return phone calls yesterday. I don't know why, though I like to think it was because he or she was too busy answering the deluge of complaints from MSNBC viewers offended by Don Imus and his crew.

If advocating for gay couplehood is a subject too "controversial" to allow it on NBC's air waves, what do they call the advocating that Imus and his crew did last month on the occasion of the death of Yasser Arafat? "Stinking animals," said Imus sidekick Sid Rosenberg, referring to the throngs of mourners gathered around Arafat's coffin. "They ought to drop the bomb right there, kill 'em all right now...

"Well," said Imus, "the problem is we have [reporter] Andrea [Mitchell] there; we don't want anything to happen to her."

"Andrea, get out and then drop the bomb and kill everybody ... Look at this. Animals. Animals!"

This was no paid ad. These were paid employees of one or more giant media corporations (the contract relationships are complicated) advocating - and excuse me if I take these utterances over the airwaves too seriously - murder.

Since Imus' show is still on the air, we can assume that advocating stuff is not the problem. The problem, apparently, is advocating things that might seem to put the networks in conflict with the White House.

CBS rejected a MoveOn.org ad that would have aired during the Super Bowl. It was critical of the Bush administration's unprecedented budget deficit, and - presumably because there is some difference of opinion about whether the deficit is good or bad - it was too controversial.

What if somebody wanted to buy a 30-second spot advocating the teaching of science, including the theory of evolution?

"I don't know, I'd have to know which organizations are putting on the ad, how credible they are, that kind of thing," said CBS' McClintock.

Evolution of course is a subject that is controversial in some circles. Many, possibly including our president, consider it heresy.

But would CBS classify an ad for the teaching of evolution as "advocacy advertising"?

"I can't say at this point," said the spokesman.

Soon enough, at this rate, we may not be able to say anything at this point.

[Roughneck]

Who are they trying to kid? It's only "controvertial" if it conflicts with the Republican Guard sitting in Washington.

[Roland]

Roughneck said:

Who are they trying to kid? It's only "controvertial" if it conflicts with the Republican Guard sitting in Washington.

And that's the whole scary point.