With regard to television in the United States, censorship usually refers to the exclusion of certain topics, social groups, or language from the content of broadcast programming. While censorship has often been constructed against the explicit backdrop of morality, it has been implicitly based on assumptions about the identity and composition of the audience for U.S. broadcast television at particular points in time. The economic drive to maximize network profits has helped to inspire the different conceptions of the audience that broadcasters have held. At times, the television audience has been constructed as an undifferentiated mass. During other periods, the audience has been divided into demographically desirable categories. As the definition of the audience has changed over time, so has the boundary between appropriate and inappropriate content. At times, different sets of moral values have often come into conflict with each other and with the economic forces of American broadcasting. The moral limits on content stem from what might be viewed as specific social groups’ social and cultural taboos, particularly concerning religious and sexual topics.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the networks and advertisers measured the viewing audience as an undifferentiated mass. Despite the lumping together of all viewers, broadcasters structured programming content around the “normal,” dominant values of white, middle-class Americans. Therefore, content centered around the concerns of the nuclear family. Topics such as racism or sexuality, which seemingly had little direct impact on this domestic setting, were excluded from content. Indeed, ethnic minorities were excluded, for the most part, from the television screen because they did not fit into the networks’ assumptions about the viewing audience. Sexuality was a topic allocated to the private, personal sphere, rather than the public arena of network broadcasting. For example, during the mid-1960s, the sexual relationship between Rob and Laura Petrie in The Dick Van Dyke Show could only be implied. When the couple’s bedroom was shown, twin beds diffused any explicit connotation that they had a physical relationship. Direct references to nonnormative heterosexuality were excluded from programming altogether. In addition, coarse language that described bodily functions and sexual activity or profaned sacred words was excluded from broadcast discourse.

However, conceptions about the viewing audience and the limits of censorship changed drastically during the early 1970s. To a large degree, this shift in censorship came about because techniques for measuring the viewing audience became much more refined at that time. Ratings researchers began to break down the viewing audience for individual programs according to specific demographic characteristics, including age, ethnicity, education, and economic background. In this context, the baby-boomer generation (younger, better educated, with more disposable income) became the desired target audience for television programming and advertising. Even though baby boomers grew up on television programming of the 1950s and 1960s, their tastes and values were often in marked contrast to that of their middle-class parents. Subjects previously excluded from television began to appear with regularity.

All in the Family was the predominant battering ram that broke down the restrictions placed on television content during the preceding 20 years. Frank discussions of sexuality, even outside of traditional heterosexual monogamy, became the focal point of many of the comedy’s narratives. The series also introduced issues of ethnicity and bigotry as staples of its content. Constraints on the use of profanity began to crumble as well. Scriptwriters began to pepper dialogue with “damns” and “hells,” language not permitted during the more conservative 1950s and 1960s.

While the redefinition of the desirable audience in the early 1970s did expand the parameters of appropriate content for television programming, the new candor prompted reactions from several fronts and demonstrated large divisions within social and cultural communities. As early as 1973, the Supreme Court emphasized that community standards vary from place to place: “It is neither realistic nor constitutionally sound to read the First Amendment as requiring that people of Maine or Mississippi accept public depiction of conduct found tolerable in Las Vegas or New York City.” Clearly, such a ruling leaves it to states or communities to define what is acceptable and what is not, a task that cannot be carried out to everyone’s satisfaction. When applying community standards, the courts must decide what the “average person, in the community” finds acceptable or not, and some communities are clearly more conservative than others. These standards are particularly difficult to apply to television programming that is produced, for economic reasons, to cross all such regional and social boundaries.

In part as a result of these divisions, however, special-interest or advocacy groups began to confront the networks about representations and content that had not been present before 1971. For some social groups that had had very little, if any, visibility during the first 20 years of U.S. broadcast television, the expanding parameters of programming content were a mixed blessing. The inclusion of Hispanics, African Americans, and gays and lesbians in programming was preferable to their near invisibility during the previous two decades, but advocacy groups often took issue with the framing and stereotyping of the new images. From a contrasting perspective, conservative groups began to oppose the incorporation of topics within content that did not align easily with traditional American values or beliefs. In particular, the American Family Association decried the increasing presentation of nontraditional sexual behavior as acceptable in broadcast programming. Other groups rallied against the increased use of violence in broadcast content. As a result, attempts to define the boundaries of appropriate content have become an ongoing struggle, as the networks negotiate their own interests against those of advertisers and various social groups. Whereas censorship in the 1950s and 1960s was based on the presumed standards and tastes of the white, middle-class nuclear family, censorship in the 1970s became a process of balancing the often conflicting values of marginal social groups.

The proliferation of cable since the 1980s has only exacerbated the conflicts over programming and censorship. Because of a different mode of distribution and exhibition (often referred to as “narrowcasting”) cable television has been able to offer more explicit sexual and violent programming than broadcast television. To compete for the viewing audience that increasingly turns to cable television channels, the broadcast networks have loosened restrictions on programming content, enabling them to include partial nudity, somewhat more graphic violence, and the use of coarse language. This strategy seems to have been partially successful in attracting viewers, as evidenced by the popularity of adult dramas such as NYPD Blue. However, this programming approach has opened the networks to further attacks from conservative advocacy groups, which have increased the pressure for government regulation (i.e., censorship) of objectionable program content.

As these issues and problems indicate, most Americans, because of cherished First Amendment rights, are extremely sensitive to any form of censorship. Relative to other countries, however, the United States enjoys remarkable freedom from official monitoring of program content. Negative reactions are often expressed toward imported or foreign programs when they do not reflect indigenous norms and values. “Cutting of scenes” is practiced far more in developing countries than in Western countries. Americans may find it interesting to note that even European countries consider exposure to nudity and sex to be less objectionable than abusive language or violence.

Sydney Head, Christopher Sterling, and Lemuel Schofield point out that the control of media and media content is also related to the type of government in power in a particular country. They identify four types of governmental philosophy related to the issue of censorship: authoritarian, paternalistic, pluralistic, and permissive. Of the four types, the first two are more inclined to exercise censorship because they assume they know what is best for citizens. Anything that challenges this exclusive view must be banned or excluded. Since most broadcasting in such countries is state funded, control is relatively easy for the government to impose. Exclusionary methods include governmental control of broadcast stations’ licenses, jamming external broadcasts, promoting indigenous programming, imposing restrictions on imported programs, excluding newspaper articles, cutting scenes from films, and shutting down printing presses.

Pluralistic and permissive governments allow for varying degrees of private ownership of broadcasting stations. Such governments assume that citizens will choose what they consider best in a free market where competing media companies offer their products. Such an ideal can be effective, of course, only if the competitors are roughly equal and operate in the interests of the public. To maintain this “balance of ideas” in the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) established rules that regulate the formation of media monopolies and require stations to demonstrate they operate in the interests of their audiences’ good. Despite such intentions, recent deregulation has disturbed the balance, allowing powerful media conglomerates to dominate the marketplace and reduce the number of voices heard.

Pluralistic and permissive governments also assume that competing companies will regulate themselves. Perhaps the best-known attempt at self-regulation is conducted by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which rates motion pictures for particular audiences. For example, the contents of “G” rated movies are considered suitable for all audiences and “PG” requires parental guidance, whereas “R,” “X,” and “NC17” are considered appropriate for adults only.

In the past, one of the arguments against censorship has been freedom of choice. Parents who object to offensive television programs can always switch the channel or choose another show. Un fortunately, parental supervision is lacking in many households. In the 1990s, this problem, coupled with political and interest group outrage against media producers, led many to debate the possibility of a self-imposed television rating system similar to that of the MPAA. To counter conservative criticism and government censorship, producers and the networks agreed to begin a ratings system that could be electronically monitored and blocked in the home. In 1996 the Telecommunications Act required new television sets sold in the United States to include the “V-chip,” technology that allows home viewers to program their television sets to block reception of specific shows or of shows with particular ratings. In 1997 the U.S. television rating system—employing six grades that indicate the age-appropriateness of particular programs—was implemented, with the TV-Y (appropriate for very young children), TV-Y7 (suitable for children over 7 years), G (for general audiences), TV-PG (parental guidance suggested), TV-14 (not intended for children under 14 years), or TV-M (mature audiences only) symbol appearing on the upper-left-hand corner of the TV screen at the beginning of each program. In addition, to indicate whether the episode contains certain types of content, up to four additional symbols may be placed below the TV rating: V (violence), L (potentially offensive language), D (mature dialogue), and/or S (sexual situations). Ideally, with this technology and the ratings, parents could effectively censor programming they found unsuitable for their children, while still allowing the networks to air adult-oriented programming. However, the V-chip and the rating system have not been entirely successful, with some people complaining that the information provided is confusing and insufficient. Furthermore, not all the networks fully implemented the rating policy: NBC, in particular, uses the age-related ratings but does not indicate specific types of content.

In the 1970s, an early attempt at a similar sort of regulation came when the FCC encouraged the television industry to introduce a “family viewing concept,” according to which television networks would agree to delay the showing of adult programs until children were, presumably, no longer among the audience. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) willingly complied with this pressure, but in 1979 a court ruled that the NAB’s action was a violation of the First Amendment.

In the late 1990s, as networks relaxed corporate restrictions on content in their competition with cable and satellite programming, the early-evening hours once again took on special importance. In mid-1996, more than 75 members of the U.S. Congress placed an open letter to the entertainment industry in Daily Variety. The letter called on the creative community and the programmers to provide an hour of programming each evening that was free from sexual innuendo, violence, or otherwise troublesome material. Clearly, the question of censorship in television continues to vex programmers, producers, government officials, and viewers. No immediate solution to the problems involved is apparent. Indeed, the debate and struggle over censorship of programming will more than likely continue in the 21st century, as social groups with diverse values vie for increased influence over program content.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on New York and Washington, D.C., and the subsequent war in Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom) have brought issues of censorship into sharper focus. The events of September 11 precipitated an atmosphere of national vulnerability and defensiveness. At this time, the American public seemed willing to tolerate an invasive police presence and a high level of surveillance, in exchange for security. Censorship in a variety of forms has also been accepted, within and without the country, provided it is justified by national security. To increase national security, the George W. Bush administration found it necessary to create a Department of Homeland Security, with sweeping authority and jurisdiction.

Under great pressure to reveal what the government knew about the activities of terrorists prior to September 11 and the soundness of intelligence reports used to justify the Iraq war, President Bush asked a Congressional Committee on Intelligence to published a detailed report. In the public sections, 28 pages that implicated members of the Saudi royal family were censored. This action is allegedly to protect sensitive relationships that might affect the war effort.

Under the U.S.A. Patriot Act of 2001 and the Homeland Security Act, notice was given to librarians that the activities of library patrons, including their World Wide Web browsing, might be subjected to government surveillance without the knowledge or consent of those patrons. In response to this notice, many librarians voiced their strong opposition to provisions of those acts, claiming that they violated their professional ethics, undermined the privacy of individuals, and would have a chilling effect on research and the free flow of information.

Reporting during Operation Iraqi Freedom was handled in a methodical and open manner. Reporters “embedded” in the army were allowed to file reports directly from the battlefront, providing frontline accounts. At times these field reports placed reporters in great jeopardy and several died in the war. The Basra Sheraton Hotel, which was being used by al-Jazeera journalists as a base, was bombed. Apparently no one was hurt, but al-Jazeera complained to the Pentagon. The news organization claimed that it had provided the Pentagon with all the relevant details about its reporters, as stipulated by international practice and conventions, governing the reporting of wars. An inquiry into this incident revealed that American forces may have believed sniper fire was coming from the building.