Seven hundred years later, the matter of Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl nipple may finally be put to rest. And CBS won’t be paying for it. A federal appeals court has shot down the FCC’s $550,000 fine against the network for its part in Nipplegate, when, during the 2004 football halftime show, Justin Timberlake revealed to 90 million people that Jackson has at least one of something that everybody has two of. The three-judge panel declared the FCC “deviated from its nearly 30-year practice of fining indecent broadcast programming only when it was so ‘pervasive as to amount to “shock treatment” for the audience.’” Also: That nine-sixteenths of one second of bare breast, despite being TiVo-able and replayed endlessly by horny 13-year-olds, wasn’t such a big deal.
So, NBC, how’s your plan for broadcasting 3,600 hours of Olympics coverage across your 500 different television properties going? With just 19 days to go, we hear you’ve sold 90 percent of your ad inventory for the games, but we’ve been hearing that for awhile now.
Sure, most of your programming time will be a cakewalk: Point the camera at Michael Phelps crotch as he dives into the pool; point the camera at Paul Hamm’s crotch as he bounds across the gymnastics floor.
But what to do if, say, something controversial — and this means more than your standard doping accusations — happens in Beijing? Like if an athlete starts carrying on about Tibet, or the Chinese authorities crack down on a human rights protest outside Olympic Village, or the Today show’s license to broadcast live from Tiananmen Square suddenly gets revoked? You still going to abide by Business As Usual?
NBC News president Steve Capus insists, “If there’s news, we’re going to cover it.”
This is funny. Not because we don’t believe NBC News’ crackteam of reporters will try to do their jobs as best they can, because they will.
Rather, look to corporate overlord GE, who has a lot riding on these Olympics games. And not just the $1 billion in ad revenue. CONTINUED »
Monsier R, nee Richard Makela, is a French rapper who might be sent to jail for doing the sort of thing that American rappers do all the time. A court recently agreed to consider a complaint lodged by a conservative MP against Monsieur R. Why? Because the rapper referred to France as a “slut” in the song “FranSSe” off of his latest album, Politikment Incorrekt. The actual offending lyrics are ‘”France is a bitch, don’t forget to fuck her till she’s exhausted/You have to treat her like a slut, man.” At another point, Mr Makela says: “I piss on Napoleon and on General de Gaulle.”‘ Mon Dieu!
China has given the OK to 247 video-sharing sites to resume operations after shutting them down earlier this year. Curiously not making the cut? Tudou.com, Youku.com and, yes, 56.com. [Variety]
“China’s YouTube,” the website 56.com, has been offline since June 3, with this notice, which says something about a service upgrade, the only evidence it even existed. Some might point the government’s regular crackdown on Internet content, which runs afoul of its standards policies, now extending to online video. Or maybe they’re just getting a head start on keeping any unauthorized Olympics broadcasts off any site that isn’t stamped with NBC’s seal.
“Media regulator Ofcom has fined MTV £255,000 for broadcasting “highly offensive language and material” pre-watershed.
“These included the pre-9pm broadcast on MTV Networks Europe’s UK channel TMF of an Aphex Twin video featuring offensive words including “motherfucker” and a daytime trailer for a Jodie Marsh reality show featuring the phrase “fucking wanker”.
“Ofcom has imposed the hefty fine for “widespread and persistent” breaches of its broadcasting code by MTV Networks Europe channels MTV UK, MTV France, MTV Hits and TMF.
“The regulator said MTV had, in some cases, “repeatedly” broken the pre-watershed content ban.” [Guardian]
In not entirely surprising news, Russia’s Communist party has condemned the fourth installment of Indiana Jones, courtesy its “crude anti-Soviet propaganda that distorted history”; they’ve called for it to be banned from Russian cinemas. It might have a little something to do with Harrison Ford playing the role of a 1957 archeologist who’s facing off against Cate Blanchett’s evil KGB agent character. (Jones has previously battled the Nazis, Egyptians, and Bedouins.)
Says Viktor Perov, a Communist Party member in Russia’s second city of St Petersburg: “What galls is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them. But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have no shame.” [Reuters]
He then went on to criticize Sex and the City for promoting the idea that women could wear dresses, bags, and heels instead of traditional sarafans, rubashkas, and kokoshniks. And also for scaring kids with Communists.
Cranky former Democrat Joe Lieberman last week called on YouTube to remove videos from what he called Islamic terrorist organizations. If they can keep The Daily Show clips off the site, why not calls for the end of the Western world?
YouTube has at last publicly answered the politico’s request, and it reads something like this: Go away.
Funny, coming from a company owned by Google, which has no problem turning in its users when international authorities come calling. CONTINUED »
Heavens to Betsy, the military is about to lose their porn! If Georgia’s republican congressman Paul Broun has his way, the House will pass his legislation to ban Playboy, Hustler, and Penthouse from being delivered to U.S. bases. In fact, he says, the Military Honor and Decency Act already bans it, but last year a loophole was formed when a Department of Defense committee ruled those magazines aren’t pornographic. [Military.com, via Savage] Please just don’t ban legitimate magazines, which have a much more appropriate place with our men in uniform, like Out, The Advocate, and Inches.
Late yesterday, YouTube pulled the anti-Scientology video from actor Jason Beghe, which was posted by videographer Mark Bunker. Naturally, that’s sent the legions of ex-Scientologists, who cutely refer to the cult as “Co$,” for “Church of $cientology,” into a panic, believing the Google-owned YouTube caved to the church’s almighty power — and ability to craft a tersely worded letter.
Or maybe YouTube canceled Bunker’s account because of previous copyright violations, according to one theory making the rounds. It’s not like Beghe’s video is gone from the video site; just search for his name and you’ll pull up another copy.
But ousting the original certainly becomes easier if the church can point out its publisher’s account is also housing copyright-violating material.
Some Jews are upset the New York Times-owned classical radio station WQXR refused a 60-second paid commentary placement about “bombings carried out against Israel by the militant Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas.” Counters the radio station: The ad doesn’t make clear the missiles it’s talking about aren’t being aimed at any part of the station’s listening area. [
Apr 8, 2008 · Link · Respond
Writing an article about television censorship and the use of naughty words, Washington Post scribe Lisa de Moraes finds herself in the unusual position of discussing what, exactly, the FCC has such a problem with — while her own newspaper won’t let her use certain words (or, actually, letters) to describe the situation. Awkward!
On the April 10 episode of “30 Rock,” the staff of the late-night show “TGS” has become obsessed with a new reality hit called “MIL[letter that's been deemed too naughty for The Washington Post when it follows M, I and L] Island.”
For the uninitiated: MIL[WaPo Scarlet Letter] stands for Mothers I’d Like to [have sex with].
In this episode of “30 Rock” — which NBC says also is titled “MIL[WaPo Banned Letter] Island” — network bigwig Jack (Alec Baldwin) is watching the riveting finale of this reality-series hit, pitting the final two contestants, Debra vs. Deborah, when he is blindsided by a blind item in a newspaper gossip column. In it, a network staffer calls him a “Class A moron” and adds, “That guy can eat my poo.” [WaPo]
“F” = Not allowed
“Poo” = Totally kosher
Like President Bush, Yahoo admits its relationship with China is “complex.” So many millions of wired Chinese, so many government restrictions, and so much money on the table.
Already wearing scarlet letters for voluntarily censoring its Chinese search results and aiding Chinese authorities in identifying journalist Shi Tao (who was jailed for 10 years in 2005 for “divulging state secrets”), the search giant now stands accused of posting some 19 photos of Tibetan protesters on its website, essentially identifying rioters for Chinese authorities eager to punish the opposition.
On Friday, the homepage of Yahoo China – which is operated by the privately held e-commerce Alibaba Group, which Yahoo owns 40 percent of – ran a “most wanted” poster that promised rewards for anyone who could help officials track down protesters. (Other sites, including MSN’s Chinese page, are said to have published similar content.) But that notice disappeared once French news outlet Observers fired off a mass email blast about it.
But now Yahoo says it did not post the photos of the Tibetan crowd, which were distributed by Chinese officials. (The photo here is of a protest in Rome.)
In a statement, Yahoo claims, “We are a company founded on the principle that promoting access to information can fundamentally improve people’s lives and enhance their relationship with the world around them.” The 13 Tibetans who have so far died the upheaval would have to agree.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether saying “fuck” on the air should earn a FCC fine. [AP]
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