Prof. Phillips Quoted in Washington Post Story on Censorship of Chris Rock and Will Smith's Language During the Oscars Incident
April 1, 2022
The Washington Post published a recent story on the censored audio in U.S. broadcasts of the Oscar awards after Will Smith slapped Chris Rock. The story quoted PIJIP's Professor Victoria Phillips, who teaches Communications Law at WCL.
The American broadcast of the awards show censored the audio immediately after the slap, in which the actor both cussed. According to the Post: "If U.S. broadcasters had carried the profanity-laced exchange, they could have run afoul of federal rules prohibiting 'obscene, indecent and profane content from being broadcast on the radio or TV'."
Prof. Phillips told the Post that FCC fines are for obscenity are rare, but the threat of very high fines has led media companies to follow FCC guidelines. She noted that indecency guidelines cover a variety of types of content:
While the FCC has rarely punished broadcasters for violating the rules in recent years, American University law professor Victoria Phillips said the mere threat of a fine in the hundreds of thousands has led companies to police themselves, with the guidelines serving as “a constant bee in their bonnet.”
... Phillips said the decision by U.S. broadcasters to censor expletives that ran in some other countries — right after airing the physical altercation between Smith and Rock in full — also speaks to Americans’ sensibilities about profanity and violence.
“Indecency guidelines have all been about sort of sexual, titillating provocative stuff, yet we see so much violence” on broadcast TV and radio, said Phillips, who previously served as an adviser at the FCC.