ABC blindsides viewers with ‘f’-bomb

Story by AFA Journal Staff. Sources cited for News of Interest indicate source of basic information only. March 2008

  The Parents Television Council (PTC) blasted the ABC network over its lack of remorse for airing the “f”-word unedited on the January 15 edition of Good Morning America. 

  PTC and AFA both called on their members to file indecency complaints with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over the expletive, uttered by actress Diane Keaton during an interview with host Diane Sawyer.

  Dan Isett, director of corporate and government affairs at PTC, said the fact that the two women joked on the program about the remark and ABC did not issue an apology shows just how much contempt the broadcast networks have for viewers who own the public airwaves.

  An ABC News official told Reuters News that the network corrected the interview for later feeds, “bleeping” the word for the Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zones. But Isett argued that there was enough evidence of celebrities using foul language in live interviews that precautions should have been taken.

  “And even failing that, they could have stopped the interview and apologized to their audience, their affiliates, and their advertisers for airing material like that,” he said.

  Instead, according to the PTC spokesman, Keaton and Sawyer essentially “appeared to be amused by the profanity, making no sincere effort to apologize to the viewers whom they sucker-punched.”

Isett said he found the unwillingness of the veteran news anchor and ABC to apologize to viewers for the incident unnerving.

  “This is more evidence of just how irresponsible the networks are willing to be – and just how necessary it is for there to be some sort of enforceable regime” banning such language when children are in the audience, he said. “[Networks] must be more responsible for this – and that’s really what this debate is all out.”

  PTC also wanted indecency complaints filed against CBS for airing partially bleeped “f”-words in a music video that aired December 30 on the news program 60 Minutes. A federal appeals court in New York ruled that so-called “fleeting” instances of profanity are not actionable by the FCC. Decency advocates like PTC are hoping the U. S. Supreme Court will one day take up the case and reverse the ruling.

www.onenewsnow.com, 1/18/08