ABC affiliates in eight states refused to air the Veterans Day network broadcast of “Saving Private Ryan” for fear the FCC will fine them, or worse, for broadcasting profanity.
The film won five Oscars and was broadcast on Veterans Day by ABC in 2001 and 2002. It has an R rating and has been called the best war movie ever made.
E. W. Scripps, Citadel Communications and Belo Group banned the broadcast at all their affiliates. Other stations at Cox Communications, Hearst-Argyle, Pappas Telecasting and Tribune Broadcasting did not show the movie.
“The pre-emptions reflect the heightened anxiety among the nation’s broadcasters — likely to continue into the second term of the Bush administration — over scrutiny, not to mention expensive fines, they could receive from Capitol Hill,” Reuters reported. See the Reuters story here.
For those of you who don’t know about George Orwell’s novel “1984”, here is the discription on Amazon.com.
“Novel by George Orwell, published in 1949 as a warning about the menaces of totalitarianism. The novel is set in an imaginary future world that is dominated by three perpetually warring totalitarian police states. The book’s hero, Winston Smith, is a minor party functionary in one of these states. His longing for truth and decency leads him to secretly rebel against the government. Smith has a love affair with a like-minded woman, but they are both arrested by the Thought Police. The ensuing imprisonment, torture, and reeducation of Smith are intended not merely to break him physically or make him submit but to root out his independent mental existence and his spiritual dignity. Orwell’s warning of the dangers of totalitarianism made a deep impression on his contemporaries and upon subsequent readers, and the book’s title and many of its coinages, such as NEWSPEAK, became bywords for modern political abuses.”