Shame on Fox for Censoring Sally Field - TV Crush

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Mary McNamara

Shame on Fox for Censoring Sally Field
September 16, 2007

I'm watching the west coast tape delay of the Emmys. At the end of Sally Field's acceptance speech for best actress in a drama series (ABC's Brothers & Sisters), Fox suddenly cut away to a static shot. Surprised and shocked, I just tapped into the Internet.

Apparently Fox censored Field. Wow. Apparently, Field wasn't the only one. But the censorship of her remarks was the most noticeable and egregious. Lame and heavy-handed.

"And let's face it, if the mothers ruled the world, there would be no goddamn wars in the first place'' is what the audience would have heard Field say had Fox not behaved badly.

Said Field backstage when told of Fox's excision, (as reported on EW): 'That's too bad. I wanted to say something about the mothers who wait for their military children to come home.... I don't care. I have no comment other than, 'Oh, well.' I said what I wanted to say. I honestly believe that if mothers ruled the world, we wouldn't be sending our children off to be slaughtered.... I probably shouldn't have said the 'God' in front of the 'damn.' I would've liked to have said more bleeped-out words, but that's life.''

UPDATE: Worse, my local Fox station - KTVU - which just aired extensive coverage post-Emmys during their 11p.m news telecast pointedly failed to mention Field's win.

Posted by Mary McNamara on September 16, 2007 | Comments (2)

September 17, 2007
In response to: Shame on Fox for Censoring Sally Field
WayneG commented:

Let's face it, broadcast networks (and the local stations) are afraid to get an FCC fine. Once Sally started with the curse word then her speech was censored. It wasn't the subject of her speech. What bothered me most is how shameless FOX is in promoting their shows during the show (and I'm not talking promos during commercial breaks). Even my local FOX station is always promoting FOX shows during the newscast. Of course all the big media groups like Viacom, Time Warner, and Universal do it as well, but FOX is the worst!

September 17, 2007
In response to: Shame on Fox for Censoring Sally Field
mary mcnamara commented:

Hi Wayne - I'm with you on the shameless promotion. totally. I talked about it in my subsequent post. I've also noticed that my local Fox station has been increasingly promoting stories and shows associated w/ Fox and/or the corporate parent. Maybe I haven't been tracking closely enough but I can't recall same problem on other local news stations - at least not to the same, shameless extent. P.S. the name escapes me at the moment but there is a group here in California that's been tracking how local news stations use material supplied by big corporations (pharmaceuticals etc.), w/out disclosing the source.