Considering the United States is seen as a bastion for freedom, it might come as a surprise to read the words “TV censorship in America.” After all, freedom of speech is literally the first freedom secured by the Bill of Rights.
When most of us think of censorship, we think of countries such as China, where the government actively restricts access to information it thinks will limit its power.
However, TV censorship is present in the United States, although it looks a lot different from what we might traditionally consider censorship. The government, until recently, has actually had a tiny role in censoring what content gets on TV and what gets withheld from viewers.
In a world where freedom of speech and personal privacy are both being reinterpreted in real-time, let’s look at how TV has been censored over the years.
As the ACLU points out, and as you may have recognized yourself, the key word in this definition is “offensive.”
What is deemed offensive? And who deems it offensive?
Both questions matter significantly when understanding censorship, for often it’s one group attempting to gain political power over another that tries to set these definitions.
There are two important concepts that come into play when discussing censorship. The first is the idea of “neutrality.” Essentially, you can’t limit someone’s personal expression just because someone else thinks it’s offensive, poor-quality, hurtful, etc. Attempting to do this is an obvious example of censorship, and it is illegal in today’s United States.
Therefore, Neo-Nazis and other hate groups still get to hold their marches and rallies. While what they are saying and doing is extremely offensive, the US Constitution forbids the government from stopping them.
The other issue to consider is security. Expression can be restricted if it poses a direct threat to someone else or to the country. The classic example is that you can’t yell “fire” when you’re in a movie theater. Doing so could cause mass panic and hurt lots of people. In addition, if you work for the government, they may limit how much you can tell your friends or family what you do because sharing these details could put the nation at risk.
What makes up a threat can certainly be subject to interpretation. The Supreme Court has typically been rather conservative in what it considers potentially harmful in an effort to not infringe Americans’ Constitutional right to free speech.
At the extreme, governments will censor all ideas and opinions that question their power or authority. Thankfully, this type of censorship doesn’t really happen in the United States, at least not directly. People can generally say whatever they want politically. The only consequences come in the polls.
Instead, in the United States, censorship has revolved more around what is considered “decent.” Violence, sex, drug use, and other types of “adult content” are often kept off of public airwaves because they are considered “indecent.”
At first glance, you might think, “what’s so bad about that? I don’t need to see lots of blood and sex on TV all the time!”
That’s a fair perspective to take, but the adage, “if you give an inch they take a mile” applies here. By allowing censorship of any type of content, it becomes too easy to allow other types of censorship, and this can have a ripple effect in society causing many other problems pertaining to the following concepts:
While the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, there is still a lot of room for interpretation about what actually counts as free speech. By allowing censorship to happen, even in the smallest degree, this right gets put in jeopardy, and, by extension, this puts all other rights in trouble. Remaining free requires constant vigilance.
Any limits or conditions to the right to free speech are inherently problematic, even more so when we think about where things could go from there.
Essentially, by allowing censorship of any form, we as a society are saying that the government does indeed have the power, and the right, to limit personal expression. It doesn’t take much for things to devolve from there until the government is actively working to restrict any form of expression that questions or contradicts those in power.
The Constitution and its many stipulations were put in place to ensure that no one group in society could exert too much influence over the rest. The right to free speech is very much one of these stipulations. Allowing it to degrade could cause the very foundations of American democracy to crumble.
A lot of this comes down to having access to the “truth.” Of course, truth is very relative, the whole point of free speech. If censorship limits our access to information, then we only get a limited view of what’s happening in the world, and this prevents us from determining our own version of truth.
How the media has evolved over the years, despite active censorship from the government, means finding the “truth” has become harder than ever.
When we hear the word censorship, we tend to think first of the government. It has all the “power” and therefore has all the incentive to censor the information we receive.
In the United States, the government cannot legally censor any information, unless of course, it can prove that exposing it would produce a legitimate and significant national security threat.
As we will discuss, the FCC can fine networks if it receives enough “indecency” complaints. This is technically not a restriction. Networks can keep broadcasting what they want and paying the fines, though this is not a sustainable practice. Usually, the networks respond by changing what they air, which turns FCC fines into a form of censorship.
However, censorship still exists in the United States. We’re all familiar with the phrase, “You can’t say that on TV.” Who says we can’t? If it’s not the government, then who’s doing the censoring?
Interestingly, in the United States, the ones doing most of the censoring are actually the television networks themselves.
These entities are businesses and have a vested interest in making sure the content they put out is pleasing to their audiences. In the end, they can broadcast pretty much whatever they want, but not everyone wants to see or hear everything they could possibly see or hear. So, networks censor themselves to keep their audiences happy.
Most do this through their “Broadcast Standards and Practices” departments. This also exists to help protect the network from lawsuits that might arise from anything they air.
In this sense, society is doing most of the censoring in the United States, especially with the large networks that reach such wide audiences. If people have an appetite for a certain type of content, then the networks will show it. Yet, in general, they keep excessive violence, sex, drug use, and other content our society doesn’t like off the public airwaves.
Therefore, networks/services such as HBO, Netflix, Hulu, etc. often produce content that would not be suitable for the bigger networks. As paid services, these networks have access to a more specific audience, and the FCC also can’t regulate them.
Plus, since you need to subscribe to these services and make an active choice to watch their content, it’s much easier to avoid if you wish. With the big networks, it’s possible you might turn your TV on and see blood and violence, something not everyone wants.
Again, all of this is the network’s decision. No one is forcing them to do this. It’s just what they have deemed to be the best for their business.
Besides the networks, one of the biggest sources of TV censorship is advertisers. Ads pay for a lot of the content we watch, particularly on traditional networks and cable. Therefore, advertisers have a lot of say in what airs and what doesn’t.
Of course, what advertisers will allow varies widely. If the demographic an advertiser is going after doesn’t mind edgier content, then they likely will not say much to the broadcaster. If they do mind, then they are more likely to influence what gets onto the airwaves.
Also, networks aren’t always beholden to advertisers. If they really want to air something because they think it’s important or because they think it will go over well with viewers, they can always just look for different advertisers. This can sometimes be difficult if contracts have already been signed.
In the early days of TV, as you will see when we go through the history of censorship, advertisers often had more say. This is because they often “sponsored” entire programs, meaning they were the only advertiser, i.e. the one paying for the whole thing. This meant they had much more clout when it came time to censorship. Nowadays, networks rely on advertisement money from countless sources, so they don’t always have to listen to just one company.
The other source of censorship does actually come from the government, specifically the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). While the government can’t technically restrict people’s expression, they can fine networks for airing content that they deem to be inappropriate or a potential threat to national security.
This can then have a powerful impact on what broadcasters want to air. The fines can be quite significant, serving as an impactful deterrent from airing certain kinds of content.
As we’ll discuss in a moment, this power came about as the result of a Supreme Court decision, and its legality remains in question today. While the FCC has had this power for some time, it didn’t really start exercising it until recently, specifically during the Bush administration.
This more heavy-handed approach from the FCC has led many to question if the government is indeed censoring us, but there is still a lot of gray area in this debate.
Below is a timeline of some of the more important events in the first half-century of American television censorship. As you will see, censorship during this time period looked a lot different from today.
In 1934, during the FDR administration, Congress passed the Communications Act to establish the FCC as an official government bureau.
The logic for creating this oversight board was that the airwaves being used by radio broadcasters at the time (but later television stations) were actually public. The government had sponsored the construction of the infrastructure needed for both radio and television, and so it therefore felt it had the right and the power to regulate these airwaves.
The initial purpose of this was not to censor. Instead, it was to ensure that these public airwaves were in fact being used for the public good. This included looking at the content that was broadcast, but it was also about making sure that one company or person didn’t gain too much control over public radio waves.
This is censorship in a sense, but the intention was very much to improve the quality of what was being broadcast.
In the early years of its existence, the FCC didn’t really do much to exercise its new powers. One of the first major things it did wasn’t really censorship, but an effort to regulate the power of the news.
To do this, the FCC introduced the “Fairness Doctrine.” This policy stated that news broadcasts, if they were going to use public airwaves, had to present more than just one side of the story. The point behind this was to ensure the American public was consuming complete, fair, and balanced information. This was considered a fundamental component of a healthy, functioning democracy.
Stations that did not comply with the Fairness Doctrine risked losing their broadcast license. In this sense, this is a sort of censorship, but the principle behind it was anything but. It’s actually an example of where government regulation can be beneficial to society.
As television sets started making their way into American homes, broadcasters realized they not only had a growing influence on American culture but there were certain things the American public did and did not want to see on television.
The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), which comprised the top radio and TV stations at the time (NBC, CBS, and ABC, mostly) created and agreed to the Code of Practice for Television Broadcasters.
This was self-imposed censorship. The networks committed to not show content that:
Members of the NAB were encouraged to present news that was “fair, factual, and without bias,” as well as set aside time for religious broadcasts.
Interestingly, they also placed limits on how many commercial minutes there could be per hour, a sign that they didn’t want television to turn into simply a conduit for advertising.
Eventually, the code was abandoned, but it led to the formation of individual networks’ Standards and Practices Departments,” which would serve the same role.
Clearly, this effort was an attempt to censor, but not so much with the motive of promoting a particular politician or political party, but to push a distinct set of values on the American public.
In a modern context, a lot of the components of the Code make no sense, which just speaks to how much American culture has changed in the past 70 years.
The King of Rock’ n’ Roll made his first television appearance in 1956 on The Ed Sullivan Show. Initially, the cameras showed Elvis in his entirety, but once he started gyrating his hips as he so famously did, they immediately switched the angle to make sure only the top part of his body was on camera.
When Elvis next appeared on the show, in 1959, they didn’t even bother showing him from the waist down. This was one of the first examples of a network censoring itself under The Code established in 1952 by the NAB.
The next major attempt at censorship came in 1975 when the FCC tried to establish a “Family Friendly Hour.” This policy required broadcasters to set aside the first hour of prime time schedules (usually 7-8 pm) for shows that were wholesome and, as the name suggests, family-friendly.
This policy came hot on the heels of the self-censorship the networks had been doing for years. However, a year later, it was challenged in court and deemed unconstitutional. This set the precedent for what the FCC could and couldn’t do. Specifically, it reaffirmed that it did not have the power to restrict what was aired on television.
The mini-series that documented the story of a Black family starting from when Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton) was ripped from his West African home and sold into slavery was a controversial program at the time for many reasons. However, it was also the first program to air on broadcast television that included full-frontal nudity.
This shows how the networks were breaking from their initial stance on what should and should not be aired. The FCC did not object to this broadcast, nor could it have, once again showing its limitations in actually censoring content.
Until the mid-1970s, the government actually had little power over what content made it onto American airwaves. However, this was all about to change, and this would dramatically reshape television censorship in the United States, leading us into the present day.
In the landmark case FCC vs. Pacifica, the Supreme Court changed course from previous precedents and said the FCC does in fact have the power to censor content that is deemed “indecent.” The case revolved around George Carlin’s comedy routine, “Filthy Words,” which WBAI in New York City aired in its entirety.
The court argued that because television had become so pervasive in American homes; it was difficult for viewers, particularly children, to have a proper choice as to the content they consumed. They said, once you hear or see something, you can't unhear or unsee it, and this is not fair. So, the FCC can regulate what content gets on TV.
From this case came the “Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television,” which later became the title of another George Carlin routine. This act protested this decision and pointed out the dangerous direction the Court was going in by granting the FCC this authority.
Modern legal scholars still question the Court’s arguments in this decision, and they even argue that it could easily be overturned today thanks to modern technologies that make it easier for parents to regulate the type of content their kids watch.
Almost forty years after first implementing it, the FCC repealed the Fairness Doctrine, meaning news broadcasts were no longer obligated to present the news in a fair and balanced way. While this might be a victory for free speech (requiring fairness limited what networks could say), it also opened the door for biased news media to take center stage.
Throughout the 1990s, cable news would grow considerably, largely because it could present the news in a way that was most appealing to its audience, not that was most balanced. This has helped usher in today’s situation, where it’s almost impossible to get a complete picture of an event occurring in the world.
It’s unlikely to happen, but it’s worth asking if it might not be a bad idea to bring the Fairness Doctrine back.
Despite getting legal permission to censor in the late 1970s, the FCC was reluctant to actually exercise this power for some time. However, in 1990, this changed. One of the first people it targeted was Howard Stern.
However, Stern didn’t just pay the fine and change his content. Instead, he kept doing what he was doing, and over the course of the next 14 years, he would get fined more than $2 million by the FCC.
Eventually, he reached a settlement to not have to pay all of this, and then he picked up and moved his show to Sirius radio. Since it operated using satellites, it did not fall under the FCC’s jurisdiction.
During the Bush administration, the FCC started getting considerably bolder with its use of fines, particularly for live broadcasts, an area where the FCC typically was more lenient.
This changed at the 2003 Golden Globes when U2 lead singer Bono used a handful of expletives that led to considerable fines for ABC.
This would pale in comparison to what would come the next year.
For those who don’t remember, a “wardrobe malfunction” during the halftime show of Super Bowl XXXVIII exposed Janet Jackson’s breast to the millions of people watching the live broadcast. The FCC responded by fining CBS $550,000, by far the largest fine ever issued by the Commission. In addition, CBS lost millions more in sponsorship money, as advertisers did not want to be associated with such indecency. Here’s a breakdown of the full fallout from this malfunction:
This also led Congress to increase the maximum fines the FCC could issue for indecency by over 10 times, suggesting that this was becoming a much bigger priority for the government.
Interestingly, part of the reason the FCC makes these decisions is that it’s reacting to complaints from the public. Anyone can file an indecency complaint with the FCC, and if enough come in, the Commission will respond and issue a fine.
In this sense, while the FCC is doing the censoring, it’s once again the American public that is really censoring itself.
This event had a much wider impact because it showed that the FCC had become unpredictable. As mentioned, live events were usually treated with more leniency since they are inherently unpredictable. Yet after the FCC fine, almost all networks began broadcasting live events on a time delay so that they could block out any unexpected indecency.
Whether you agree with this, it shows that the FCC, and by extension the government, was becoming increasingly powerful in censoring television content.
Always looking to push the boundaries of what’s acceptable, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone tried to air an episode in which they depicted the Prophet Mohammad, something that is strictly forbidden in Islam.
The FCC in this case argued that showing this content was not only unduly offensive to one group, but it could also pose a national security threat. In reality, this second part was likely more due more to the rampant Islamophobia raging through the US in the wake of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center.
In the end, Parker and Stone changed the episode, though in an act of defiance they included an image of Mohammad in the opening credits. This must have escaped most people because the FCC didn’t get enough complaints to justify issuing a fine.
That the FCC censored Parker and Stone shows just how effective its techniques can be.
Today, networks still broadcast live events on a delay; the fear of 2004’s fiasco is still fresh in their minds. However, the television landscape is also much different. Streaming is now the primary way most people watch TV, and since this happens on the internet, the FCC actually doesn’t have jurisdiction to regulate it.
This has allowed a lot of content that once would have never aired on television to make it into American homes. Since you need to first pay for these services and then choose to watch this content, there has been little appetite for censorship.
Still, the FCC has tremendous power, and Congress has shown a willingness in the past to expand the Commission’s power. While censorship in American television remains largely self-inflicted, it’s important to stay vigilant to prevent going down the slippery slope of allowing the government to restrict expression.
