TAKE CARE ON THE AIR!

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 7, 11 August 1939, Page 12

TAKE CARE ON THE AIR!

Self-Censorship for U.S. Broadcasters

OOTS of disapproval are sounding throughout the United States of America while the National Association of Broadcasters discusses a plan to impose censorship on itself. If delegates approve, 95 per cent. of the commercial radio stations, including all the big networks, may ban, after September 24 of this year, irreverence, profanity, vulgarity, obscenity, sex, unkind ridicule, advertising of hard liquor, fortune telling, numerology, astrology, matrimonial agencies, race tip sheets, speculative finance, and real estate promotion. The code is very similar to the censorship the film industry takes with a smile (sometimes slightly awry) from the Will Hays office. Listeners. are afraid that the American Dads and Daves will no longer be able to thrill them with " golly," "gosh," or "cripes"; or that they will have to talk about the limbs of a piano instead of its legs (or cut them off and set it "right smack on to the floor" as James Montgomery Flagg suggests in-a letter to the "New York Herald Tribune." ) If all susceptibilities are to escape offence, ‘Flagg suggests that the censorship be taken to its logical conclusion. The words "man" and "woman" should be banned. They suggest sex. The reference should be to persons or people, to keep radio nice. "Say ‘two persons were married yesterday, instead of ‘John and Mary were married yesterday.’ The word ‘married’ is rather indelicate. Yes, simply say, ‘Two persons were yesterday.’" Everyone with a secret hatred of Pekingese will have to call them dogs instead of upholstered cockroaches, in case their owners are offended, shut down their sets, and stop using ‘Mudhole Face Lotion. With everyone so touchy, Flagg believes it would: be safer to bust up all the radios and tape everybody's mouth. Even then they'd make faces.

Broadcasters must not only bar all dialogue or statements which are obscene, sacriligious, profane, or vulgar, especially as these appertain to sex; but they must also bar all dialogue or statements bordering on these sins. Language used and subject matter discussed must be suitable for mixed social groups. The Member of Parliament who «said "H .. 11" in the House of Representatives a few days ago (without censure from Mr. Speaker) would surely have burst the prim Yankee microphones. If the Victorian principles which Americans fear were applied in New Zealand we should have to do without our farm talks-in case they mentioned animal gen . . tics; without our racing com-mentary-in case some reference to d..ms crept in; without our Rugby-in case someone’s p..ts f..ll d..n; without our cooking recipes-in case they suggested mar... ge; and probably without our directors, managers, Operators, technicians, and announcers -hbecause they would undoubtedly all go mad in 48 hours. For all their joking, and ours, Americans are watching the move in serious mood. They are trying, it would seem from newspapers and magazines, to laugh freedom back into place and censorship out of it. The principle of cutting indecency out of programmes meets with no opposition, but the principle of cutting humour and fun out of programmes meets with very strong opposition. Or perhaps it is more correct to say that they oppose nothing specific but object rather to the principle that it may lie within the power of one individual or group of individuals to decide their manners, methods, and morals for them; to dictate decency to them; to rule right and wrong for themwhen they have been telling themselves since George Washington that they have grown up and don’t need bringing up any more.