Current Event for the Week of 9/4/06
Some stations want cursing out of '9/11'
CBS is planning to air a documentary on 9/11 this coming Sunday. The documentary originally began as a documentary on rookie firefighters, but became a first-hand account of 9/11. This will be the third time the documentary has aired, but the first time it's aired since Janet Jackon's "Super Bowl" incident. Many CBS stations fear showing the documentary because of fines from the FCC for cursing that occurs in the footage.
Read the article (from Yahoo News on Sun. 9/3) by clicking here.
Post comments on your views. What do you think? Should the cursing be blocked out of the documentary? Is this a violation of "free speech"? Is the historical context or meaning of the film lost without the cursing?
CBS is planning to air a documentary on 9/11 this coming Sunday. The documentary originally began as a documentary on rookie firefighters, but became a first-hand account of 9/11. This will be the third time the documentary has aired, but the first time it's aired since Janet Jackon's "Super Bowl" incident. Many CBS stations fear showing the documentary because of fines from the FCC for cursing that occurs in the footage.
Read the article (from Yahoo News on Sun. 9/3) by clicking here.
Post comments on your views. What do you think? Should the cursing be blocked out of the documentary? Is this a violation of "free speech"? Is the historical context or meaning of the film lost without the cursing?
posted by cldaily at 8:03 AM
4 Comments:
By blocking out the cursing, you aren't going to get the 'real' feeling for what it was like to be there as the terror attacks took place. While censoring isn’t going to cause historical context or meaning to be lost, I think that the censoring will take away an important part of the documentary, the emotions that were running through the minds of those that were there.
I have seen the documentary, and I wasn’t offended by the cursing in it, I knew that those people were watching America being attacked by terrorists.
I think that the cursing should be allowed because according to the article, the FCC hasn’t viewed the documentary, therefore, if the commission felt that censoring was needed, it would have already taken the appropriate measures to censor the show. The article also states “the commission routinely takes context into account in any decency analysis.” This shows that if someone files a complaint against one of the stations, the station maybe able to avoid trouble because of the historical meaning. These aren’t words we have never heard before, so let’s just leave the documentary alone. If the cursing bothers you, you don’t have to watch it.
I think it is completely disrespectful to the people who went through this to edit what they are expressing weather it is considered inappropriate or not. These people were experiencing what is most likely the most tragic event of their lives they are witnessing something that is almost incomprehensible and by taking out their real words and replacing them with bleeps or with appropriate words. If people feel they can handle watching an emotional documentary such as this they should be able to handle the profanity, which lends it an aspect of realism that makes this footage unique. How can they justify taking these peoples comments and editing them when they allow profanity in so many other situations? If there is anytime that is appropriate for cussing it would be as you watch buildings be hit with airplanes and thousands of people die. It would be unnatural for people to be calm about the situation. The words people chose to express what is happening shows just how terrible this situation is. It is inconceivable that they consider it wrong to let people have the true and precise account of what happened. I feel that everyone disserves the chance to see this film unedited if they chose to. The words the people are saying aren’t even close to as bad as the actual event.
~SmS~
I agree with ams07, there needs to be a warning at the beginning of the documentary telling the audience that it contains graphic material and language that isn't suitable for certain audiences. As long as CBS shows the warning message after every commercial, I don't see an issue with not censoring the curse words.
I would also like to mention that the stations are not the ones to be angry at it is the FCC who will enforce fines on the stations that air this program uncensored. I can understand that they are going to edit it so that they don’t have to pay the ridiculous fines but I think that the FCC needs to loosen up and get a heart instead of treating everything with a cold professionalism.
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