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Sally Field: Censored by Fox for political reasons?
Controversy is brewing online over whether Fox TV (owned by the politically conservative Rupert Murdoch) censored Sally Field during her Emmy acceptance speech Sunday night for an obscene word or because she was making an anti-war statement.
Field, who is no stranger to unusual acceptance speeches, said: ""If mothers ruled the world, there wouldn’t be any god ... " when the sound was cut off and the camera cut to other shots from the awards ceremony. The rest of the statement was: "------ wars in the first place." Backstage, Field, when pressed, said: ""If they bleep it, oh, well. I’ll just say it somewhere else."
Canadian TV played the remark uncut.
The L.A. Times Insider blog says that, under an FCC ruling from 2004, the censored word was not obscene.
The Washington Post’s media critic, Howard Kurtz, noted in an online chat:
"I don’t have any problem with Fox bleeping the expletive, given the FCC’s penchant for big fines. I have a big problem with Fox not letting Sally Fields complete her thought — that she was making a statement against the war. Award shows may or may not be the appropriate venue for political statements, but she said it at a live news event, so in a way Fox was censoring the news."